The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care

Book Title: The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care

Editor: Richard D. deShazo

Publication Information: Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2018, 215 pp., $28 hardcover, $17.50 paperback

I write this review after having read the MedPage Today article “COVID-19 Killing African Americans at Shocking Rates: Wildly disproportionate mortality highlights need to address longstanding inequities.”¹

The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care shines a bright light on precisely this civil rights history of longstanding inequities. The collection of chapters, beautifully developed by Richard deShazo, MD, is written by individuals often with first-hand experience of the painful legacy of racism in medicine throughout the United States, with a focus on the American South and Mississippi in particular. These are stories that must be told. They are stories that must be heeded. Dr deShazo’s book spurs frank conversations on dismantling racism in health care for our times.

This book is written for anyone with an interest in medicine, medical history, or civil rights in general and the struggle for justice in health care in particular. It tells the story of the ongoing struggle of African Americans for access to good health and health care in the South, and particularly in Mississippi, where that struggle changed the course of American history. It also reveals how much of our ongoing disparities in health result from a social determinant that few in medicine want to discuss: racism in the United States.” (p vii)

The visual historical chronology by deShazo and Rosemary Moak included in the introduction is already worth the purchase price. Chapter 1, written by deShazo, is entitled “A Roadmap to the Discovery of a Hushed Truth,” and signals the author’s drive to find and retell this extraordinary history, recognizing that holding silence is an act of collusion. Chock full of historical photographs and images, the book relays the stories of the history of the Black Hospital and Community Health Center Movements (chapter 2), chronicles the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi led by exemplary black physicians (chapters 5 and 6), and chronicles the stories of white allies (chapters 8 and 9). I expect that chapter 6 will bring many to tears with the compelling profiles in courage and heroism of pioneer African American physicians such as Helen Barnes, who became the first black faculty clinician at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Regarding the tensions of the time, deShazo, Smith, and Skipworth write with extraordinary clarity in chapter 5:

It seems logical to divide the forces supporting social justice in health during the civil rights era in Mississippi as “pro” and “con”. The pro side would include the NAACP, the affiliates of the National Medical Association, the black church and the US Supreme Court. The cons side would include the state government, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the Citizens’ Councils, the plantation owners, the KKK, and, unfortunately the AMA and its affiliate Mississippi State Medial Association. (p 92)

Writing like this invites contemplation on the forces behind the devastating racism in health care today.

Aside from the sheer power and inspiration of this book, there is much in here for those looking to develop and enhance their curricula in social determinants of health, in health advocacy and justice, and in culturally responsive health care. More than anything else, the book highlights heroic health care civil rights sacrifices and advocacy throughout our nation’s history in the face of threat and danger. It is a book written with passion, conviction, strength, and precision. It is impossible to read without experiencing a wide range of strong emotional responses to the way things were, the way things are, and the way things must become in a democratic nation of justice for all.