Race, Medicine, and Civil Rights

Catalog description

Health policy scholar David Barton Smith asserts that the modern health care system came of age in the Jim Crow, "separate but equal" era. As such, the social and political motivations of the era were deeply embedded into the developing system. Yet the relationship between health activism, health policy, and Black liberation is not fully understood. Students taking this course will be introduced to the nexus of the history of medicine and African American history using the important case of the "Medical Civil Rights Movement." The course proceeds roughly chronologically, a deep dive into the questions of racial segregation and integration in the spheres of medicine and public health. Such a lens helps students understand, perhaps more viscerally, how racism and segregation have severely impacted and impeded black experiences in the United States. But the course also seeks to complicate students' understandings of segregation and desegregation in medicine and public health. Students will be encouraged, throughout the course to ask: Was there a "Medical Civil Rights Movement?" If so, who were its major actors? What were its main motivations and contributions? When and how did it occur? What did it achieve? What wasn't achieved? How does the history of medical civil rights fit into larger movements for liberation and equality? Students taking this course are encouraged, though not required, to have some familiarity with the United States civil rights movement, either through previous coursework or independent study. This course meets the Dietrich Gen Ed "Perspectives on Justice and Injustice" requirement. Course Website: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/history/