Book ID: CBB001251130

Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954 (2011)

unapi

Thomas, Karen Kruse (Author)


University of Georgia Press


Publication Date: 2011
Physical Details: xvii + 372 pp.; ill.; maps; bibl.; index
Language: English

Plagued by geographic isolation, poverty, and acute shortages of health professionals and hospital beds, the South was dubbed by Surgeon General Thomas Parran "the nation's number one health problem." The improvement of southern, rural, and black health would become a top priority of the U.S. Public Health Service during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.Karen Kruse Thomas details how NAACP lawsuits pushed southern states to equalize public services and facilities for blacks just as wartime shortages of health personnel and high rates of draft rejections generated broad support for health reform. Southern Democrats leveraged their power in Congress and used the war effort to call for federal aid to uplift the South. The language of regional uplift, Thomas contends, allowed southern liberals to aid blacks while remaining silent on race. Reformers embraced, at least initially, the notion of "deluxe Jim Crow"--support for health care that maintained segregation. Thomas argues that this strategy was, in certain respects, a success, building much-needed hospitals and training more black doctors.By the 1950s, deluxe Jim Crow policy had helped to weaken the legal basis for segregation. Thomas traces this transformation at the national level and in North Carolina, where "deluxe Jim Crow reached its fullest potential." This dual focus allows her to examine the shifting alliances--between blacks and liberal whites, southerners and northerners, activists and doctors--that drove policy. Deluxe Jim Crow provides insight into a variety of historical debates, including the racial dimensions of state building, the nature of white southern liberalism, and the role of black professionals during the long civil rights movement"-- "Thomas provides a detailed history of federal health policy as it was applied to the U.S. South in the mid-twentieth century, a period when the region was described as "the number one health problem in the nation." In particular, she focuses on how reformers' early emphasis on across-the-board regional uplift was eclipsed by efforts to desegregate medical facilities and address racial disparities in the health care system

...More
Reviewed By

Review Andrew M. Manis (2015) Review of "Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954". Journal of Southern History (pp. 764-766). unapi

Review Roberts, Samuel (2013) Review of "Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954". American Historical Review (pp. 198-199). unapi

Review Pohl, Lynn Marie (2012) Review of "Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 481-483). unapi

Review Romano, Renee (2013) Review of "Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954". Social History of Medicine (pp. 309-310). unapi

Review Biggs, Adam (2014) Review of "Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935--1954". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 503-506). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001251130/

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Authors & Contributors
Marcia Chatelain
Luke, Jenny M.
Luke Messac
McQueeney, Kevin
Stevens, Rosemary A.
Starr, Paul
Concepts
Health care
Public health
Medicine and government
Medicine and race
Medicine and politics
African Americans
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
Southern states (U.S.)
Brazil
Australia
Malawi
São Paulo (Brazil)
Institutions
National Health Service (Great Britain)
American Red Cross
American Medical Association
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