AJPH SPECIAL SECTION: BLACK PANTHER PARTY
Working With the Panthers to Transform Health Care for Poor Black Communities Theodore M. Brown, PhD
I
n this excerpt from his autobiographical memoir Everybody In, Nobody Out, Quentin Young, MD, describes his work in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the “Spurgeon ‘Jake’ Winters Free People’s Medical Care Center” organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Chicago, Illinois. It was no surprise that when looking for allies to help with their free medical clinic for impoverished and underserved Black people in Chicago (“so poor that they never go to the doctor until they are practically dying”) the Panthers turned to Quentin Young.Young had long been a local and national leader in the movement to end discrimination in medicine and bring equity to health care.1 As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, he had campaigned to end the ugly disparity in health care options offered to students—White students received treatment at the University Hospital while Black students were shunted to Provident Hospital, an underfunded, run-down, and segregated facility. As a medical student, intern, and resident he had fought for national health reform and to end racial discrimination in medical care. In the 1950s he helped lead the Committee to End Discrimination in Chicago’s Medical Institutions in its demand that licensure and tax exemptions be denied to hospitals that “turn away patients solely because of their financial situation, race, creed, or color.” In the 1960s,Young played a major role in the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) and joined volunteers from across the country who traveled south to provide medical support for sick, injured, and jailed civil rights workers, and who sometimes—like H. Jack Geiger—returned to organize new forms of care to impoverished Black residents of the southern states, as he tells us in this issue of AJPH (p1738). Back in Chicago,Young worked with Martin Luther King in his campaign to confront segregation and discrimination in northern cities and in 1966 King became Young’s patient. In 1967 to 1968 and again in 1970,Young was elected MCHR national chair and moved the Committee’s office to Chicago. Young and many other MCHR members fully understood the motives, and were deeply sympathetic with the social and service goals of the Panthers. They knew that the Panthers “were skilled at engaging their constituency” and were impressed that “people were fashioning their own solutions to their own problems.” MCHR offered office space to help
1756
Voices From the Past
Brown
facilitate planning activities and worked closely with Chicago BPP members. Charismatic Panther leader Fred Hampton, before being killed in a police raid, became one of Young’s patients. As the excerpt makes clear, both in Chicago and elsewhere, MCHR had already been committed to opening free medical clinics before being approached by the Black Panthers. Alondra Nelson in her book, Body and Soul:The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, explains how and why the Panthers came to the idea of free medical clinics.2 First, it was a tactical maneuver and a survival strategy enabling the Panthers to build a strong political base by providing essential services to Black communities instead of remaining targets of police violence for efforts to defend those communities by direct physical means. Second, the idea of free, community-controlled medical clinics for poor people was part of a wave of radical health experimentation that the Panthers identified with ideologically along with other American followers of Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and Mao Zedong. Third and perhaps most powerfully, promoting free medical clinics was a continuation of the long-standing tradition of Black health activism that exposed poor or nonexistent services for Black communities, segregated institutions, and rampant discrimination and abuse in all aspects of health provision and within the health professions. Chicago Panthers pursued Black health activism so effectively, in fact, that the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health quoted their scathing critique of Cook County Hospital in an article published in the 1970 American Journal of Public Health.3 MCHR and BPP were thus natural allies in Chicago, where they could join forces in attacking a dysfunctional medical system and in “delivering health care to the most disadvantaged among us.” Quentin Young was the widely admired, deeply committed local physician who could most effectively bring it all together. The alliance between the BPP and Quentin Young with his extensive network of personal and institutional contacts allowed the Chicago BPP clinic to achieve real success and recognition. Through Young and MCHR, the clinic readily recruited eager professional volunteers and acquired in-kind contributions as well as occasionally “liberated” equipment, supplies, and
Brown
Voices From the Past
AJPH SPECIAL SECTION: BLACK PANTHER PARTY
medicines. John Dittmer in The Good Doctors, his history of MCHR, adds these details: The Chicago MCHR . . . assessed each member five dollars to support the center, and supervised the schedules of more than 150 nurses, technicians, physicians, and health science students who volunteered to work in the evenings and Sundays.4(p227)
The clinic’s work was described very positively in a survey of Chicago free medical clinics published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1972. According to that account, the Spurgeon Jake Winters Free People’s Medical Care Center provided services and patient advocacy in a remodeled storefront facility in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. Over a period of 14 months it saw 1400 patients at least once, and during the sample week of April 1971 served the needs of 75 patients.5 Like other free clinics in Chicago, it provided services according to the following principles: 1) Health care is a right and must be free at the point of delivery; 2) the community served must have the controlling interest in the planning, organization and administration of the clinics; 3) humanity, dignity and concern for the patient must be the mode in which health care is delivered; and 4) the present health care system is a failure and the free clinics offer a model for a new health care delivery system.5(p1348)
It is not clear how long the clinic survived, but it was probably not very far into the 1970s. Like free clinics throughout the country, it lived a precarious existence and was beset with frustrations and contradictions, not least of which was the risk of cooptation by the very medical institutions that it criticized and confronted.6,7 In addition, in 1972 Young accepted the chairmanship of the Department of Medicine at Cook County Hospital and tried hard to reform the hospital from within and use some of its resources to help support community-based clinics without taking them over. But his new administrative obligations and the political constraints of his position removed him from weekly volunteer stints at the Free Peoples Medical Care Center and other forms of direct and indirect support. Adapting to changing realities, the BPP in Chicago and elsewhere turned its attention in a concentrated way to screening for sickle cell anemia and other genetically transmitted diseases, and downplayed the direct provision of clinical interventions. But as John Stoeckle predicted in 1972,
Voices From the Past
Brown
[When] the short half-life of the clinics runs out, they will have served useful purposes by making new groups of patients visible and acceptable and by creating new conditions of clinical work.7(p605)
Their involvement with BPP clinics certainly left fond memories and long-term positive associations in professional “alumni,” as we can see clearly in Alondra Nelson’s interview with Cleo Silvers (p1744) and Mary T. Bassett’s editorial (p1741) in this issue of AJPH. There are, in addition, indications of empathy and appreciation on the part of a younger generation, as seen in Amy Garvey’s comments as a spokesperson for White Coats for Black Lives, also in this issue (p1749). Silvers, Bassett, and Woode all point to the basic recognition, as H. Jack Geiger puts it so clearly in this issue, that for the poor and powerless Black population the BPP worked so hard to serve, it is time . . . to return to those early initial models that saw health care as an instrument of social change—partnering with communities to confront the social, economic, environmental, and political circumstances that so powerfully shape the population health status of the disadvantaged and marginalized. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Theodore M. Brown is with the Departments of History and Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Correspondence should be sent to Theodore M. Brown, History Department, University of Rochester, NY 14627 (e-mail:[email protected]). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link. This article was accepted July 16, 2016. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303402
REFERENCES 1. Brown TM, Fee E, Healey MN. Quentin Young (1923–2016): Advocate, activist, and “rebel without a pause.” Am J Public Health. 2016;106: 1025–1027. 2. Nelson A. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press; 2011. 3. Yoder FD, Reed S. Cook County health care facilities and the state health department. Am J Public Health. 1970;60:1706–1711. 4. Dittmer J. The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press; 2009. 5. Turner IR. Free health centers: a new concept? Am J Public Health. 1972;62:1348–1353. 6. Bloomfield C, Levy H. Underground medicine: ups and downs of the free clinics. Ramparts. 1972;10:35–42. 7. Stoeckle JD, Anderson WH, Page J, Brenner J. The free medical clinics. JAMA. 1972;219:603–605.
AJPH
October 2016, Vol 106, No. 10
1757
Working With the Panthers to Transform Health Care for Poor Black Communities Theodore M. Brown, PhD
I
n this excerpt from his autobiographical memoir Everybody In, Nobody Out, Quentin Young, MD, describes his work in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the “Spurgeon ‘Jake’ Winters Free People’s Medical Care Center” organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Chicago, Illinois. It was no surprise that when looking for allies to help with their free medical clinic for impoverished and underserved Black people in Chicago (“so poor that they never go to the doctor until they are practically dying”) the Panthers turned to Quentin Young.Young had long been a local and national leader in the movement to end discrimination in medicine and bring equity to health care.1 As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, he had campaigned to end the ugly disparity in health care options offered to students—White students received treatment at the University Hospital while Black students were shunted to Provident Hospital, an underfunded, run-down, and segregated facility. As a medical student, intern, and resident he had fought for national health reform and to end racial discrimination in medical care. In the 1950s he helped lead the Committee to End Discrimination in Chicago’s Medical Institutions in its demand that licensure and tax exemptions be denied to hospitals that “turn away patients solely because of their financial situation, race, creed, or color.” In the 1960s,Young played a major role in the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) and joined volunteers from across the country who traveled south to provide medical support for sick, injured, and jailed civil rights workers, and who sometimes—like H. Jack Geiger—returned to organize new forms of care to impoverished Black residents of the southern states, as he tells us in this issue of AJPH (p1738). Back in Chicago,Young worked with Martin Luther King in his campaign to confront segregation and discrimination in northern cities and in 1966 King became Young’s patient. In 1967 to 1968 and again in 1970,Young was elected MCHR national chair and moved the Committee’s office to Chicago. Young and many other MCHR members fully understood the motives, and were deeply sympathetic with the social and service goals of the Panthers. They knew that the Panthers “were skilled at engaging their constituency” and were impressed that “people were fashioning their own solutions to their own problems.” MCHR offered office space to help
1756
Voices From the Past
Brown
facilitate planning activities and worked closely with Chicago BPP members. Charismatic Panther leader Fred Hampton, before being killed in a police raid, became one of Young’s patients. As the excerpt makes clear, both in Chicago and elsewhere, MCHR had already been committed to opening free medical clinics before being approached by the Black Panthers. Alondra Nelson in her book, Body and Soul:The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, explains how and why the Panthers came to the idea of free medical clinics.2 First, it was a tactical maneuver and a survival strategy enabling the Panthers to build a strong political base by providing essential services to Black communities instead of remaining targets of police violence for efforts to defend those communities by direct physical means. Second, the idea of free, community-controlled medical clinics for poor people was part of a wave of radical health experimentation that the Panthers identified with ideologically along with other American followers of Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and Mao Zedong. Third and perhaps most powerfully, promoting free medical clinics was a continuation of the long-standing tradition of Black health activism that exposed poor or nonexistent services for Black communities, segregated institutions, and rampant discrimination and abuse in all aspects of health provision and within the health professions. Chicago Panthers pursued Black health activism so effectively, in fact, that the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health quoted their scathing critique of Cook County Hospital in an article published in the 1970 American Journal of Public Health.3 MCHR and BPP were thus natural allies in Chicago, where they could join forces in attacking a dysfunctional medical system and in “delivering health care to the most disadvantaged among us.” Quentin Young was the widely admired, deeply committed local physician who could most effectively bring it all together. The alliance between the BPP and Quentin Young with his extensive network of personal and institutional contacts allowed the Chicago BPP clinic to achieve real success and recognition. Through Young and MCHR, the clinic readily recruited eager professional volunteers and acquired in-kind contributions as well as occasionally “liberated” equipment, supplies, and
Brown
Voices From the Past
AJPH SPECIAL SECTION: BLACK PANTHER PARTY
medicines. John Dittmer in The Good Doctors, his history of MCHR, adds these details: The Chicago MCHR . . . assessed each member five dollars to support the center, and supervised the schedules of more than 150 nurses, technicians, physicians, and health science students who volunteered to work in the evenings and Sundays.4(p227)
The clinic’s work was described very positively in a survey of Chicago free medical clinics published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1972. According to that account, the Spurgeon Jake Winters Free People’s Medical Care Center provided services and patient advocacy in a remodeled storefront facility in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. Over a period of 14 months it saw 1400 patients at least once, and during the sample week of April 1971 served the needs of 75 patients.5 Like other free clinics in Chicago, it provided services according to the following principles: 1) Health care is a right and must be free at the point of delivery; 2) the community served must have the controlling interest in the planning, organization and administration of the clinics; 3) humanity, dignity and concern for the patient must be the mode in which health care is delivered; and 4) the present health care system is a failure and the free clinics offer a model for a new health care delivery system.5(p1348)
It is not clear how long the clinic survived, but it was probably not very far into the 1970s. Like free clinics throughout the country, it lived a precarious existence and was beset with frustrations and contradictions, not least of which was the risk of cooptation by the very medical institutions that it criticized and confronted.6,7 In addition, in 1972 Young accepted the chairmanship of the Department of Medicine at Cook County Hospital and tried hard to reform the hospital from within and use some of its resources to help support community-based clinics without taking them over. But his new administrative obligations and the political constraints of his position removed him from weekly volunteer stints at the Free Peoples Medical Care Center and other forms of direct and indirect support. Adapting to changing realities, the BPP in Chicago and elsewhere turned its attention in a concentrated way to screening for sickle cell anemia and other genetically transmitted diseases, and downplayed the direct provision of clinical interventions. But as John Stoeckle predicted in 1972,
Voices From the Past
Brown
[When] the short half-life of the clinics runs out, they will have served useful purposes by making new groups of patients visible and acceptable and by creating new conditions of clinical work.7(p605)
Their involvement with BPP clinics certainly left fond memories and long-term positive associations in professional “alumni,” as we can see clearly in Alondra Nelson’s interview with Cleo Silvers (p1744) and Mary T. Bassett’s editorial (p1741) in this issue of AJPH. There are, in addition, indications of empathy and appreciation on the part of a younger generation, as seen in Amy Garvey’s comments as a spokesperson for White Coats for Black Lives, also in this issue (p1749). Silvers, Bassett, and Woode all point to the basic recognition, as H. Jack Geiger puts it so clearly in this issue, that for the poor and powerless Black population the BPP worked so hard to serve, it is time . . . to return to those early initial models that saw health care as an instrument of social change—partnering with communities to confront the social, economic, environmental, and political circumstances that so powerfully shape the population health status of the disadvantaged and marginalized. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Theodore M. Brown is with the Departments of History and Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Correspondence should be sent to Theodore M. Brown, History Department, University of Rochester, NY 14627 (e-mail:[email protected]). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link. This article was accepted July 16, 2016. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303402
REFERENCES 1. Brown TM, Fee E, Healey MN. Quentin Young (1923–2016): Advocate, activist, and “rebel without a pause.” Am J Public Health. 2016;106: 1025–1027. 2. Nelson A. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press; 2011. 3. Yoder FD, Reed S. Cook County health care facilities and the state health department. Am J Public Health. 1970;60:1706–1711. 4. Dittmer J. The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press; 2009. 5. Turner IR. Free health centers: a new concept? Am J Public Health. 1972;62:1348–1353. 6. Bloomfield C, Levy H. Underground medicine: ups and downs of the free clinics. Ramparts. 1972;10:35–42. 7. Stoeckle JD, Anderson WH, Page J, Brenner J. The free medical clinics. JAMA. 1972;219:603–605.
AJPH
October 2016, Vol 106, No. 10
1757
