June 24 1896 Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to receive an honorary MA degree from Harvard University.

The American Journal of Medicine

Volume 127, Issue 11, November 2014, Pages 1033–1040

Review

Black Physicians and the Struggle for Civil Rights: Lessons from the Mississippi Experience : Part 2: Their Lives and Experiences

• Richard D. deShazo, MD^a, b, , , 
• Robert Smith, MD^c, 
• Leigh Baldwin Skipworth, BA^a

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doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2014.05.042

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Refers To

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

• Black Physicians and the Struggle for Civil Rights: Lessons from the Mississippi Experience: Part 1: The Forces for and Against Change

• The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 127, Issue 10, October 2014, Pages 920-925
• •  Purchase PDF (187 K)

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Abstract

Little information is available on the lives and experiences of black physicians who practiced in the South during the Jim Crow era of legalized segregation. In Mississippi and elsewhere, it is a story of disenfranchised professionals who risked life, limb, and personal success to improve the lot of those they served. In this second article on this topic, we present the stories of some of the physicians who were leaders in the civil rights movement in Mississippi as examples. Because the health disparities they sought to address have, not of their own making, been passed on to the next generation of physicians, the lessons learned from their experience are worthy of consideration.

Keywords

• Black physicians; 
• Freedom Summer; 
• Jim Crow medicine

Funding: None.

Conflict of Interest: None.

Authorship: All authors had access to the data and played a role in writing this manuscript.

Requests for reprints should be addressed to Richard D. deShazo, MD, Department of Medicine, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MI 39216.

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.