Print Books
A Heart for the Work by Claire L. WendlandCall Number: W 18 W469 2010
ISBN: 9780226893259
Publication Date: 2010-09-30
Burnout is common among doctors in the West, so one might assume that a medical career in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, would place far greater strain on the idealism that drives many doctors. But, as A Heart for the Work makes clear, Malawian medical students learn to confront poverty creatively, experiencing fatigue and frustration but also joy and commitment on their way to becoming physicians. The first ethnography of medical training in the global South, Claire L. Wendland's book is a moving and perceptive look at medicine in a world where the transnational movement of people and ideas creates both devastation and possibility. Wendland, a physician anthropologist, conducted extensive interviews and worked in wards, clinics, and operating theaters alongside the student doctors whose stories she relates. From the relative calm of Malawi's College of Medicine to the turbulence of training at hospitals with gravely ill patients and dramatically inadequate supplies, staff, and technology, Wendland's work reveals the way these young doctors engage the contradictions of their circumstances, shedding new light on debates about the effects of medical training, the impact of traditional healing, and the purposes of medicine.
Against all odds : the legacy of students of African descent at Harvard Medical School before affirmative action, 1850-1968. by Nora Nouritza Nercessian
Call Number: WZ 150 N443 2004
Publication Date: 2004
Covering a period in America that spans more than 150 years, Against All Odds fills a void in the history of Black physicians, Harvard Medical School, medicine, and our society. The author brings to life true accounts of Black men and women in medicine, their struggles, their determination, and theit triumphs. These frank stories challenge insights that can inform current struggles around achieving diversity in the health professions and eliminating institutional racism.
Black Man in a White Coat by Damon TweedyCall Number: WZ 100 T971b 2015
ISBN: 9781250105042
Publication Date: 2016-09-06
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*ONE OFTIME MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR ALIBRARY JOURNALBEST BOOK SELECTION*A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE BOOK SELECTION One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites." Black Man in a White Coatexamines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosedwith a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/blackmaninwhitec0000twee
Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South by Thomas J. WardCall Number: WZ 80.5.B5 W263b 2003
ISBN: 1557287562
Publication Date: 2003-10-01
In this comprehensive account, Thomas J. Ward examines the development of the African American medical profession in the South. Under segregation, the white medical profession provided inadequate service at best to African American patients. Paradoxically, African Americans could gain financial success and upward mobility by becoming doctors themselves. Ward tracks the rise of African American medical schools, professional organizations, and hospitals. He also explores the difficulties that African American physicians faced as an elite group within a subjugated caste, and the many ways in which their education, prestige, and relative wealth put them at odds with the southern caste system. Within the black community, in turn, this prestige often pushed doctors into the public sphere as business leaders, civic spokesmen, and political activists. Drawing on a variety of sources from oral histories to the records of professional organizations, this book illuminates the contradictions of race and class in the South and provides valuable new insight into class divisions within African American communities in the era of segregation.
Black Women in White by Darlene Clark HineCall Number: WY 11 AA1 H66b 1989
ISBN: 0253205298
Publication Date: 1989-10-01
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart OneThe Institutional Infrastructure of Black Nursing1. Origins of the Black Hospital and Nurse Training School Movement: An Overview2. Northern Black Hospitals and Nurse Training Schools3. Training Nurses in Southern Black Hospitals4. Black Collegiate Nursing Education: A Case StudyPart TwoMore Than Angels of Mercy5. Racism, Status, and the Professionalization of Black Nursing6. The Politics of Agency and the Revitalization of the NACGN7. Black Women in White8. ÒWe Shall Not Be Left OutÓ: World War II and the Integration of NursingConclusionAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex
Body and Soul by Alondra NelsonCall Number: WA 11 AA1 N45 2012
ISBN: 9780816676484
Publication Date: 2011-10-20
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism--its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination--was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party's focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers' People's Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent. The Black Panther Party's understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy--and that struggle--continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care.
Doctors and Slaves by Richard B. SheridanCall Number: WZ 70 DW5 S5d 1985
ISBN: 9780521259651
Publication Date: 1985-01-25
In this study Professor Sheridan presents a rich and wide-ranging account of the health care of slaves in the British West Indies, from 1680-1834. He demonstrates that while Caribbean island settlements were viewed by mercantile statesmen and economists as ideal colonies, the physical and medical realities were very different. The study is based on wide research in archival materials in Great Britain, the West Indies and the United States. By steeping himself in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, Professor Sheridan is able to recreate the milieu of a past era: he tells us what the slave doctors wrote and how they functioned, and he presents a storehouse of information on how and why the slaves sickened and died. By bringing together these diverse medical demographic and economic sources, Professor Sheridan casts new light on the history of slavery in the Americas.
Dying in the City of the Blues by Keith WailooCall Number: WH 11 AT2 W139d 2001
ISBN: 0807825840
Publication Date: 2001-03-26
This groundbreaking book chronicles the history of sickle cell anemia in the United States, tracing its transformation from an "invisible" malady to a powerful, yet contested, cultural symbol of African American pain and suffering. Set in Memphis, home of one of the nation's first sickle cell clinics, Dying in the City of the Blues reveals how the recognition, treatment, social understanding, and symbolism of the disease evolved in the twentieth century, shaped by the politics of race, region, health care, and biomedicine. Using medical journals, patients' accounts, black newspapers, blues lyrics, and many other sources, Keith Wailoo follows the disease and its sufferers from the early days of obscurity before sickle cell's "discovery" by Western medicine; through its rise to clinical, scientific, and social prominence in the 1950s; to its politicization in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking forward, he considers the consequences of managed care on the politics of disease in the twenty-first century. A rich and multilayered narrative, Dying in the City of the Blues offers valuable new insight into the African American experience, the impact of race relations and ideologies on health care, and the politics of science, medicine, and disease.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dyingincityofblu00keit
Educating Black Doctors by James Summerville
Call Number: W19 S955e 1983
ISBN: 9780817301439
Publication Date: 1984-10-30
"[This is] a solid book, often inspiring, and one which widens our understanding of many areas, including medicine, foundations, Southern blacks, and federal-state relations." -"Journal of the History of Medicine"
Health Care in the Black Community by Edith M. Freeman; Sadye LoganCall Number: WA 300 H433754 2000
ISBN: 0789004577
Publication Date: 2000-11-27
Empower patients with culture-specific strategies for promoting health, treating disease, and preventing violence! Current reports show that Black Americans have the highest death rate of all racial and ethnic groups. They suffer disproportionately from a number of fatal diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, and certain cancers. Moreover, violence takes far too high a toll, especially among young Black men. Clearly a different approach to health education and promotion is needed to end this tragic waste of valuable human lives. Health Care in the Black Community: Empowerment, Knowledge, Skills, and Collectivism proposes an innovative model for health professionals working in the Black community. Traditional Western medicine focuses on sickness, the isolated individual, and the material world. However, the Afrocentric values of many Black people emphasize wellness, the community, and the spiritual world. By basing health care approaches on the community's positive values of holistic healing and mutual assistance, Health Care in the Black Community suggests practical, effective strategies for promoting physical and emotional wellness. This comprehensive and informative book offers a solid intellectual framework as well as practical advice. Health Care in the Black Community: identifies deeply held African-American cultural traditions and attitudes offers specific suggestions for combining health care priorities with respect for cultural concerns shows how to gain compliance by involving patients in their own care and drawing on community strengths discusses the impact of specific problems such as low self-esteem, infertility, HIV/AIDS, and violence on Black families develops strategies for preventing family violence by helping family members define and identify emotions shares programs and ideas for enhancing the physical and mental health of elderly Black people identifies ways to overcome the drawbacks of early parenthood Health Care in the Black Community offers health care professionals-- policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and educators in the fields of social work, health care, and cultural studies--successful methods, models, and suggestions to help improve health care in Black communities.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/healthcareinblac0000unse_n0d5
Infectious Fear by Samuel Kelton RobertsCall Number: WF 11 AA1 R647 2009
ISBN: 9780807832592
Publication Date: 2009-04-30
For most of the first half of the twentieth century, tuberculosis ranked among the top three causes of mortality among urban African Americans. Often afflicting an entire family or large segments of a neighborhood, the plague of TB was as mysterious as it was fatal. Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr. examines how individuals and institutions--black and white, public and private--responded to the challenges of tuberculosis in a segregated society. Reactionary white politicians and health officials promoted "racial hygiene" and sought to control TB through Jim Crow quarantines, Roberts explains. African Americans, in turn, protested the segregated, overcrowded housing that was the true root of the tuberculosis problem. Moderate white and black political leadership reconfigured definitions of health and citizenship, extending some rights while constraining others. Meanwhile, those who suffered with the disease--as its victims or as family and neighbors--made the daily adjustments required by the devastating effects of the "white plague." Exploring the politics of race, reform, and public health, Infectious Fear uses the tuberculosis crisis to illuminate the limits of racialized medicine and the roots of modern health disparities. Ultimately, it reveals a disturbing picture of the United States' health history while offering a vision of a more democratic future.
Intensely Human by Margaret HumphreysCall Number: WZ 80.5.B5 H927I 2998
ISBN: 9780801886966
Publication Date: 2008-03-05
Black soldiers in the American Civil War were far more likely to die of disease than were white soldiers. In Intensely Human, historian Margaret Humphreys explores why this uneven mortality occurred and how it was interpreted at the time. In doing so, she uncovers the perspectives of mid-nineteenth-century physicians and others who were eager to implicate the so-called innate inferiority of the black body. In the archival collections of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, Humphreys found evidence that the high death rate among black soldiers resulted from malnourishment, inadequate shelter and clothing, inferior medical attention, and assignments to hazardous environments. While some observant physicians of the day attributed the black soldiers' high mortality rate to these circumstances, few medical professionals--on either side of the conflict--were prepared to challenge the "biological evidence" of white superiority. Humphreys shows how, despite sympathetic and responsible physicians' efforts to expose the truth, the stereotype of black biological inferiority prevailed during the war and after.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/intenselyhumanhe0000hump
Introduction to Biosocial Medicine by Donald A. BarrCall Number: WA 31 B268 2015
ISBN: 9781421418605
Publication Date: 2016-01-15
While 40 percent of premature deaths in the United States can be attributed to such dangerous behaviors as smoking, overeating, inactivity, and drug or alcohol use, medical education has generally failed to address how these behaviors are influenced by social forces. This new textbook from Dr. Donald A. Barr was designed in response to the growing recognition that physicians need to understand the biosocial sciences behind human behavior in order to be effective practitioners. Introduction to Biosocial Medicine explains the determinants of human behavior and the overwhelming impact of behavior on health. Drawing on both recent and historical research, the book combines the study of the biology of humans with the social and psychological aspects of human behavior. Dr. Barr, a sociologist as well as physician, illustrates how the biology of neurons, the intricacies of the human mind, and the power of broad social forces all influence individual perceptions and responses. Addressing the enormous potential of interventions from medical and public health professionals to alter these patterns of human behavior over time, Introduction to Biosocial Medicine brings necessary depth and perspective to medical training and education.
Making a Place for Ourselves by Vanessa Northington GambleCall Number: WX 11 AA1 G191m 1995
ISBN: 0195078896
Publication Date: 1995-03-23
Making a Place for Ourselves examines an important but not widely chronicled event at the intersection of African-American history and American medical history--the black hospital movement. A practical response to the racial realities of American life, the movement was a "self-help"endeavor--immediate improvement of separate medical institutions insured the advancement and health of African Americans until the slow process of integration could occur. Recognizing that their careers depended on access to hospitals, black physicians associated with the two leading black medicalsocieties, the National Medical Association (NMA) and the National Hospital Association (NHA), initiated the movement in the 1920s in order to upgrade the medical and education programs at black hospitals. Vanessa Northington Gamble examines the activities of these physicians and those of blackcommunity organizations, local and federal governments, and major health care organizations. She focuses on three case studies (Cleveland, Chicago, and Tuskegee) to demonstrate how the black hospital movement reflected the goals, needs, and divisions within the African-American community--and thestate of American race relations. Examining ideological tensions within the black community over the existence of black hospitals, Gamble shows that black hospitals were essential for the professional lives of black physicians before the emergence of the civil rights movement. More broadly, Making aPlace for Ourselves clearly and powerfully documents how issues of race and racism have affected the development of the American hospital system.
March: Books One-Three by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)Call Number: E840.8.L43 A3 2015
ISBN: 9781603093002
Publication Date: 2013-08-13
Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations. Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books selection- recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults- "March- Book One," written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell, and published by Top Shelf Productions.
Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. WashingtonCall Number: W 20.55 .H9 W318m 2006
ISBN: 9780767915472
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge-a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers-and indeed the whole medical establishment-with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/medicalapartheid0000wash
Medicine and Slavery by Todd L. Savitt
Call Number: WZ 80.5.B5 S267m 1978
ISBN: 9780252006531
Publication Date: 1978-12-01
Widely regarded as the most comprehensive study of its kind, this volume offers valuable insight into the alleged medical differences between whites and blacks that translated as racial inferiority and were used to justify slavery and discrimination. In Medicine and Slavery, Todd L. Savitt evaluates the diet, hygiene, clothing, and living and working conditions of antebellum African Americans, slave and free, and analyzes the diseases and health conditions that afflicted them in urban areas, at industrial sites, and on plantations.
Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway; John Bidwell (Editor)Call Number: WQ 160 H745m 2007
ISBN: 9781577664352
Publication Date: 2006-09-01
"Monique and the Mango Rains is the compelling story of a rare friendship between a young Peace Corps volunteer and a midwife who became a legend. Monique Dembele saved lives and dispensed hope in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter. This book tells of her unquenchable passion to better the lives of women and children in the face of poverty, unhappy marriages, and endless backbreaking work. Monique's buoyant humor and willingness to defy tradition were uniquely hers. In the course of this deeply personal narrative, as readers immerse themselves in the rhythms of West African village life, they come to know Monique as friend, mother, and inspired woman."--BOOK JACKET.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/moniquemangorain00holl
Psychotherapy with African American Women by Leslie C. Jackson (Editor); Beverly Greene (Editor)Call Number: WM 420 P97594 2000
ISBN: 1572305851
Publication Date: 2000-07-11
Focusing on the breadth of issues that affect psychotherapy with African American women, this unique volume is designed to help clinicians develop a broader understanding of what is useful and what is problematic when applying psychodynamic concepts to their clients. From an array of seasoned clinicians, chapters present innovative and creative reformulations of theory and technique that build upon and challenge existing models. Issues addressed include the psychological dilemmas confronting diverse African American women as they negotiate a society that is hostile to them on multiple levels; how ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation and other differences come into play within the therapeutic dyad; and approaches to unraveling the complex interplay of sociopolitical, intrapsychic, and interpersonal concerns in treatment. Filled with illustrative clinical material and pointers for practice, the volume will enhance the cultural competence of mental heath practitioners and students across a range of disciplines. Winner (Chapter 5)--Association for Women in Psychology 10th Annual Women of Color Psychologies Award
Race and Medicine in Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century America by Todd SavittCall Number: WA 11 AA1 S267r 2006
ISBN: 087338878X
Publication Date: 2006-12-18
An examination of the medical experiences of African Americans During the days of slavery in America, racism and often-faulty medical theories contributed to an atmosphere in which African Americans were seen as chattel: some white physicians claimed that African Americans had physiological and anatomical differences that made them well suited for slavery. These attitudes continued into the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. In Race and Medicine historian Todd Savitt presents revised and updated versions of his seminal essays on the medical history of African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the South. This collection examines a variety of aspects of African American medical history, including health and illnesses, medical experimentation, early medical schools and medical professionals, and slave life insurance. Savitt examines the history of sickle-cell anemia and identifies the first two patients with the disease noted in medical literature. He proposes an explanation of why the disease was not well known in the general African American population for at least 50 years after its discovery. He also explains why African Americans developed elephantiasis in the Charleston Low Country and not elsewhere in the country. Other topics Savitt explores include African American medical schools, the formation of an African American medical profession, and SIDS among Virginia slaves. With its new research data and interpretations of existing materials, Race and Medicine will be a valuable resource to those interested in the history of medicine and African American history as well as to the medical community.
Sex, Race, and Science by Edward J. Larson
Call Number: HQ755.5.U5 L334s 1995
ISBN: 9780801849381
Publication Date: 1979-03-19
In the first book to explore the theory and practice of eugenics in the American South, Edward J. Larson shows how the quest for "strong bloodlines" expressed itself in state laws and public policies from the Progressive Era through World War II. Larson shows how the seemingly broad-based eugenics movement was in fact a series of distinct campaigns by small groups of determined individuals for legislation at the state level.
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired by Susan L. SmithCall Number: WZ 80.5.B5 S661sa 1995
ISBN: 0812232372
Publication Date: 1995-08-29
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired moves beyond the depiction of African Americans as mere recipients of aid or as victims of neglect and highlights the ways black health activists created public health programs and influenced public policy at every opportunity. Smith also sheds new light on the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment by situating it within the context of black public health activity, reminding us that public health work had oppressive as well as progressive consequences.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/sicktiredofbeing0000smit
Strength in What Remains by Tracy KidderCall Number: WZ 100 N735 2009
ISBN: 9781400066216
Publication Date: 2009-08-25
Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/strengthinwhatre00kidd
The Morehouse Mystique by Marybeth Gasman; Louis W. Sullivan (As told to); Barbara Bush (Foreword by)Call Number: W 19 G 246 2012
ISBN: 9781421404431
Publication Date: 2012-04-01
The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of only four predominantly Black medical schools in the United States. Among its illustrious alumni are surgeons general of the United States, medical school presidents, and numerous other highly regarded medical professionals. This book tells the engrossing history of this venerable institution. The school was founded just after the civil rights era, when major barriers prevented minorities from receiving adequate health care and Black students were underrepresented in predominantly White medical schools. The Morehouse School of Medicine was conceived to address both problems--it was a minority-serving institution educating doctors who would practice in underserved communities. The school's history involves political maneuvering, skilled leadership, dedication to training African American physicians, and a mission of primary care in disadvantaged communities. Highlighting such influential leaders as former Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, The Morehouse Mystique situates the school in the context of the history of medical education for Blacks and race relations throughout the country. The book features excerpts from personal interviews with prominent African American doctors as well as with former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, who reveal how local, state, and national politics shaped the development of Black medical schools in the United States. The story of the Morehouse School of Medicine reflects the turbulent time in which it was founded and the lofty goals and accomplishments of a diverse group of African American leaders. Their tireless efforts in creating this eminent Black institution changed the landscape of medical education and the racial and ethnic makeup of physicians and health care professions.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/morehousemystiqu0000gasm
The Soul of a Doctor by Gordon Harper; Sachin H. Jain; Susan Pories; Jerome E. Groopman, (Foreword by)Call Number: W 18 S683 2006
ISBN: 156512507X
Publication Date: 2006-06-02
By the time most of us meet our doctors, they've been in practice for a number of years. Often they seem aloof, uncaring, and hurried. Of course, they're not all like that, and most didn't start out that way. Here are voices of third-year students just as they begin to take on clinical responsibilities. Their words focus on the odd transition students face when they must deal with real people in real time and in real crises and when they must learn to put aside their emotions to make quick, accurate, and sensitive decisions. Their decisions aren't always right, and the consequences can be life-altering--for all involved. Moving, disturbing, and candid, their true stories show us a side of the profession that few ever see, or could even imagine. They show, often painfully, how medical students grow up, right at the bedside.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781565125070
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel WilkersonCall Number: E185.6 W55 2011
ISBN: 9780679763888
Publication Date: 2011-10-04
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an "unrecognized immigration" within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic. MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times * USA Today * O: The Oprah Magazine * Amazon * Publishers Weekly * Salon * Newsday * The Daily Beast NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker * The Washington Post * The Economist * Boston Globe * San Francisco Chronicle * Chicago Tribune * Entertainment Weekly * Philadelphia Inquirer * The Guardian * The Seattle Times * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * The Christian Science Monitor
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/warmthofothersun00isab
This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson SirleafCall Number: WZ 70 HL--5 S619 2009
ISBN: 9780061353475
Publication Date: 2009-04-07
"The first thing to be said about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's This Child Will Be Great is that it is exceptionally well written, a true story that seems as much a thriller as the remembrances of an ambitious and brave woman. . . . This timely book, essential for anyone who hopes to understand West Africa in general and Liberia in particular, is a lesson in courage and perseverance." --Washington Post From Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf--Africa's first elected female president--comes an inspirational memoir about her improbable rise to international prominence, her fight for political freedom, and her unwavering determination to rebuild Liberia in the wake of civil war.
Also accessible online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/thischildwillbeg0000john
Tuskegee's Truths by Susan M. Reverby (Editor)Call Number: WC 160 T965 2000
ISBN: 0807825395
Publication Date: 2000-07-03
Between 1932 and 1972, approximately six hundred African American men in Alabama served as unwitting guinea pigs in what is now considered one of the worst examples of arrogance, racism, and duplicity in American medical research--the Tuskegee syphilis study. Told they were being treated for "bad blood," the nearly four hundred men with late-stage syphilis and two hundred disease-free men who served as controls were kept away from appropriate treatment and plied instead with placebos, nursing visits, and the promise of decent burials. Despite the publication of more than a dozen reports in respected medical and public health journals, the study continued for forty years, until extensive media coverage finally brought the experiment to wider public knowledge and forced its end. This edited volume gathers articles, contemporary newspaper accounts, selections from reports and letters, reconsiderations of the study by many of its principal actors, and works of fiction, drama, and poetry to tell the Tuskegee story as never before. Together, these pieces illuminate the ethical issues at play from a remarkable breadth of perspectives and offer an unparalleled look at how the study has been understood over time.
