Eleven African American Doctors

Chronicles the achievements of eleven Afro-American physicians whose contributions helped raise the country's health standards through medical practice, research, or teaching.

Intro -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION - Motivations -- PART I - Education -- CHAPTER 1 - The Rise and Fall of the Black Medical Colleges -- CHAPTER 2 - Aid and Integration -- CHAPTER 3 - Postgraduate Education -- PART II - Professional Life -- CHAPTER 4 - Establishing a Southern Practice -- CHAPTER 5 - The Struggle for Patients -- CHAPTER 6 - Hospital Privileges -- CHAPTER 7 - Professional Associations -- PART III - Community Life -- CHAPTER 8 - Wealth and Class -- CHAPTER 9 - Public Health -- CHAPTER 10 - Civic Life -- Epilogue -- ABBREVIATIONS -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.

The true story of the black doctors and nurses who tended to Civil War soldiers in the capital. Just as African Americans fought in defense of the Union during the Civil War, African American nurses, doctors, and surgeons worked to heal those soldiers. In the nation’s capital, these brave healthcare workers created a medical infrastructure for African Americans, by African Americans. Preeminent surgeon Alexander T. Augusta fought discrimination, visited President Lincoln, testified before Congress, and aided the war effort. Washington’s Freedmen’s Hospital was formed to serve the District’s growing free African American population, eventually becoming the Howard University Medical Center. These physicians would form the National Medical Association, the largest and oldest organization representing African American doctors and patients. This book recounts the heroic lives and work of Washington’s African American medical community during the Civil War.

Contributions by Richard D. deShazo, John Dittmer, Keydron K. Guinn, Lucius M. Lampton, Wilson F. Minor, Rosemary Moak, Sara B. Parker, Wayne J. Riley, Leigh Baldwin Skipworth, Robert Smith, and William F. Winter The Racial Divide in American Medicine documents the struggle for equity in health and health care by African Americans in Mississippi and the United States and the connections between what happened there and the national search for social justice in health care. Dr. Richard D. deShazo and the contributors to the volume trace the dark journey from a system of slave hospitals in the state, through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era, to the present day. They substantiate that current health disparities are directly linked to America’s history of separation, neglect, struggle, and disparities. Contributors reveal details of individual physicians’ journeys for recognition both as African Americans and as professionals in Mississippi. Despite discrimination by their white colleagues and threats of violence, a small but fearless group of African American physicians fought for desegregation of American medicine and society. For example, T. R. M. Howard, MD, in the all-black city of Mound Bayou led a private investigation of the Emmett Till murder that helped trigger the civil rights movement. Later, other black physicians risked their lives and practices to provide care for white civil rights workers during the civil rights movement. Dr. deShazo has assembled an accurate account of the lives and experiences of black physicians in Mississippi, one that gives full credit to the actions of these pioneers. Dr. deShazo’s introduction and the essays address ongoing isolation and distrust among black and white colleagues. This book will stimulate dialogue, apology, and reconciliation, with the ultimate goal of improving disparities in health and health care and addressing long-standing injustices in our country.

African American Medical Doctoring: A Snapshot in History provides some interesting information about the profession of the African American doctor's struggles and successes. There is information about the history of medicine - ancient, the beginnings of the practice in the United States. To address the many medical education issues, including educational standards for medical doctors, the American Medical Association (AMA) was established in 1847. Then, the United States was torn apart by the Civil War from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, with extensive health care issues requiring medical doctors. The United States formed the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865 to address the medical needs of the former slaves.Despite the good intentions of the Freedmen's Bureau, medical treatment of the freedmen was severely deficient. Most southern white doctors and nurses would not treat freedmen. By 1872, Congress abandoned the programs of the Bureau. Yet, African American Medical Doctoring: A Snapshot in History includes information about those African American Civil War physicians who practiced their profession in the Union Army; and later one of these military physicians would head a VA hospital.The medical school era began to flourish in the early 1900s, which included the establishment of at least 11 medical schools for AfricanAmericans between 1868 and 1904. The Johns Hopkins University School t Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland opened in 1893 and served as the standard barrier for medical education and as a medical research university. With medical school standards put in place, many sub-standard medial schools closed, including most of the African American medical schools, known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).By 1900, 2,500 students graduated from medical schools, with almost all of them white males. These developments to set standards for medical doctors' certifications (in addition to being the first of the professional professions to require licensing) were led by Abraham Flexner and Sir William Osler, which affected the medical schools in the United States and Canada. Information about the mentioned individuals is discussed in the book.Before concluding this study, there is a brief history about the HBCUs - yesterday and today; a brief discussion about the "Compromise" speech by Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta exposition and its influence on the socio-economic growth of African American physicians in the United States; information about African American collegiate and professional fraternity founders who were medical doctors; the pioneering physicians involved in the establishment of the National Medical Association (NMA).The study ends with an analysis of efforts to increase the number of African American medical doctors; and, makes several recommendations for ways to increase the number of African American medical doctors in proportion to the percentage of their population in the United States.

The service of African Americans in defense of the Union during the Civil War required African American nurses, doctors and surgeons to heal those soldiers. In the nation's capital, these brave healthcare workers created a medical infrastructure for African Americans by African Americans. Preeminent surgeon Alexander T. Augusta fought discrimination, visited President Lincoln, testified before Congress and aided the war effort. Washington's Freedmen's Hospital was formed to serve the District's growing free African American population, eventually becoming the Howard University Medical Center. These physicians would form the National Medical Association, the largest and oldest organization representing African American doctors and patients. Author Heather M. Butts recounts the heroic lives and work of Washington's African American medical community during the Civil War.

Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for "the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica," Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new, greatly expanded edition of the original work broadens the foundation provided by Africana. Including more than one million new words, Africana has been completely updated and revised. New entries on African kingdoms have been added, bibliographies now accompany most articles, and the encyclopedia's coverage of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean has been expanded, transforming the set into the most authoritative research and scholarly reference set on the African experience ever created. More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic. African American history and culture in the present-day United States receive a strong emphasis, but African American history and culture throughout the rest of the Americas and their origins in African itself have an equally strong presence. The articles that make up Africana cover subjects ranging from affirmative action to zydeco and span over four million years from the earlies-known hominids, to Sean "Diddy" Combs. With entries ranging from the African ethnic groups to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana, Second Edition, conveys the history and scope of cultural expression of people of African descent with unprecedented depth.

This book introduces students to African-American innovators and their contributions to art, entertainment, sports, politics, religion, business, and popular culture. While the achievements of such individuals as Barack Obama, Toni Morrison, and Thurgood Marshall are well known, many accomplished African Americans have been largely forgotten or deliberately erased from the historical record in America. This volume introduces students to those African Americans whose successes in entertainment, business, sports, politics, and other fields remain poorly understood. Dr. Charles Drew, whose pioneering research on blood transfusions saved thousands of lives during World War II; Mae Jemison, an engineer who in 1992 became the first African American woman to travel in outer space; and Ethel Waters, the first African American to star in her own television show, are among those chronicled in Forgotten African American Firsts. With nearly 150 entries across 17 categories, this book has been carefully curated to showcase the inspiring stories of African Americans whose hard work, courage, and talent have led the course of history in the United States and around the world.

At times mirroring and at times shockingly disparate to the rise of traditional white American medicine, the history of African-American health care is a story of traditional healers; root doctors; granny midwives; underappreciated and overworked African-American physicians; scrupulous and unscrupulous white doctors and scientists; governmental support and neglect; epidemics; and poverty. Virtually every part of this story revolves around race. More than 50 years after the publication of An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic about race relations in the USA, An American Health Dilemma presents a comprehensive and groundbreaking history and social analysis of race, race relations and the African-American medical and public health experience. Beginning with the origins of western medicine and science in Egypt, Greece and Rome the authors explore the relationship between race, medicine, and health care from the precursors of American science and medicine through the days of the slave trade with the harrowing middle passage and equally deadly breaking-in period through the Civil War and the gains of reconstruction and the reversals caused by Jim Crow laws. It offers an extensive examination of the history of intellectual and scientific racism that evolved to give sanction to the mistreatment, medical abuse, and neglect of African Americans and other non-white people. Also included are biographical portraits of black medical pioneers like James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn a degree from a European university, and anecdotal vignettes,like the tragic story of "the Hottentot Venus", which illustrate larger themes. An American Health Dilemma promises to become an irreplaceable and essential look at African-American and medical history and will provide an invaluable baseline for future exploration of race and racism in the American health system.