Document Detail


Creating a segregated medical profession: African American physicians and organized medicine, 1846-1910.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  19585918     Owner:  NLM     Status:  In-Process    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
An independent panel of experts, convened by the American Medical Association (AMA) Institute for Ethics, analyzed the roots of the racial divide within American medical organizations. In this, the first of a 2-part report, we describe 2 watershed moments that helped institutionalize the racial divide. The first occurred in the 1870s, when 2 medical societies from Washington, DC, sent rival delegations to the AMA's national meetings: an all-white delegation from a medical society that the US courts and Congress had formally censured for discriminating against black physicians; and an integrated delegation from a medical society led by physicians from Howard University. Through parliamentary maneuvers and variable enforcement of credentialing standards, the integrated delegation was twice excluded from the AMA's meetings, while the all-white society's delegations were admitted. AMA leaders then voted to devolve the power to select delegates to state societies, thereby accepting segregation in constituent societies and forcing African American physicians to create their own, separate organizations. A second watershed involved AMA-promoted educational reforms, including the 1910 Flexner report. Straightforwardly applied, the report's population-based criterion for determining the need for phySicians would have recommended increased training of African American physicians to serve the approximately 9 million African Americans in the segregated south. Instead, the report recommended closing all but 2 African American medical schools, helping to cement in place an African American educational system that was separate, unequal, and destined to be insufficient to the needs of African Americans nationwide.
Authors:
Robert B Baker; Harriet A Washington; Ololade Olakanmi; Todd L Savitt; Elizabeth A Jacobs; Eddie Hoover; Matthew K Wynia; ; Janice Blanchard; L Ebony Boulware; Clarence Braddock; Giselle Corbie-Smith; LaVera Crawley; Thomas A LaVeist; Randall Maxey; Charles Mills; Kathryn L Moseley; David R Williams
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Journal of the National Medical Association     Volume:  101     ISSN:  0027-9684     ISO Abbreviation:  J Natl Med Assoc     Publication Date:  2009 Jun 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2009-07-09     Completed Date:  -     Revised Date:  -    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  7503090     Medline TA:  J Natl Med Assoc     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  501-12     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
The Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program, Union College, Schenectady, New York, USA.
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Investigator
Investigator/Affiliation:
John C Nelson / ; Sandra L Gadson / ; Ronald M Davis / ; Phyllis R Kopriva / ; Arthur B Elster / ; Laura L Carroll / ; Andrea Bainbridge / ; John S Haller / ; Douglas M Haynes / ; Darlene Clark Hine / ; Kenneth M Ludmerer / ; Katya Gibel Mevorach / ; Susan M Reverby / ; Marion Butler McLean / ; David Barton Smith / ; Karen Kruse Thomas /
Comments/Corrections
Comment In:
J Natl Med Assoc. 2009 Oct;101(10):1071; author reply 1071   [PMID:  19860311 ]

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