Richard D. deShazo - The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care

The Racial Divide in American Medicine

The Racial Divide

in

American Medicine

Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care

Edited by Richard D. deShazo, MD, MACP

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Copyright 2018 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2018

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: deShazo, Richard D., editor.

Title: The racial divide in American medicine : black physicians and the struggle for justice in health care / edited by Richard D. deShazo.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018006302 (print) | LCCN 2018018528 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496817693 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496817709 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496817716 ( pdf single) | ISBN 9781496817723 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496817686 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Discrimination in medical careUnited States. | African AmericansMedical careSocial aspectsUnited States. | EqualityHealth aspectsUnited States. | Health and raceUnited States.

Classification: LCC RA563.M56 (ebook) | LCC RA563.M56 R334 2018 (print) | DDC 362.108996/073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006302

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Contents

Rosemary Moak and Richard D. deShazo

Richard D. deShazo

Richard D. deShazo

Richard D. deShazo and Sara B. Parker

Richard D. deShazo, Keydron K. Guinn, Wayne J. Riley, and William F. Winter

Richard D. deShazo, Robert Smith, and Leigh Baldwin Skipworth

Richard D. deShazo, Robert Smith, and Leigh Baldwin Skipworth

John Dittmer

Richard D. deShazo, Robert Smith, and Leigh Baldwin Skipworth

Richard D. deShazo, Wilson F. Minor, Robert Smith, and Leigh Baldwin Skipworth

Richard D. deShazo, Wilson F. Minor, Robert Smith, and Leigh Baldwin Skipworth

Lucius M. Lampton and Richard D. deShazo

Richard D. deShazo

Preface

Forgiving and being reconciled are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not patting one another on the black and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking, but in the end, it is worthwhile because in the end, dealing with the real situation helps bring us to real healing. Spurious reconciliation can bring only spurious healing. In forgiving, people are not asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. In the act of forgiveness, we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoing to make a new beginning.

DESMOND TUTU, No Future without Forgiveness

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.

The chapters of this book are topical, and each stands alone, for a reason. This story has been published in medical journals in parts and pieces and has been assembled here with new material to fill in the gaps. The individual chapters have been used first in academic settings with professionals and students in the health and medical fields to open up discussion about the dark journey of American medicine toward long overdue racial reconciliation. Although this stand-alone approach inevitably leads to some overlap, it is my hope that the information offered in this way will be valuable for both general readers and students, who often no longer read whole books as their primary sources of information.

We have done our best to validate individual bits of information by checking multiple sources, especially when we have referenced online sources. provides additional background information and a chronology to help navigate the other chapters of the book.

Application of evidence-based methods hopefully has removed bias, but I must acknowledge I am a fourth-generation descendant of an Alabama Confederate captain who fought in many battles in and around Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was wounded. He later became the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, during Reconstruction. In a letter to his descendants, he described the horror of his Civil War experience.

I am hopeful that this book provides a better understanding of how present-day challenges in health care evolved from past events. Marcus Garvey once said, A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.1 If we ignore the people, places, and events that have defined us, we damage the roots of future generations. These are the generations I hope to reach with this book. In my case, my roots are how this book came to be.

A Personal Journey

When our family said yes to an offer for a new job in Mississippi in 1998, a frequent question from colleagues was, Theyre still fighting the Civil War there, arent they? I thought they were joking, but they knew more about Mississippi than I did. I forgot the question and went about my charge to grow the Department of Medicine at Mississippis only academic health center, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in Jackson. One day in 2008, I stumbled onto the apology of the American Medical Association (AMA) for its racial discrimination against black physicians: These long-standing principles proscribe physician discrimination against each other as well as against their patients.2 The chapters of this book tell the amazing story of why that apology was necessary and how and why the events that required the apology continue to influence American health care. This book also reveals the unfortunate role and responsibility of organized American medicine in past and present health disparities in our country. That responsibility has created a chasm between black and white physicians in the United States that still begs for reconciliation. Reading that apology triggered a cascade of memories.

Agnes Carr deShazo, certified dental hygienist, at work at the Norwood Clinic in Birmingham in 1944. This photograph appeared in a publication of that clinic, where she worked for over forty years. Courtesy of Richard D. deShazo.