Blacks in Medicine by Richard Allen Williams

Author:Richard Allen Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030419608
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 4.8“Sorry, but you have an incurable skin condition” editorial cartoon (by Herbert Block published in The Washington Post 4 Jul 1963) depicting white physicians’ attitudes toward fraternizing with black physicians as colleagues in white medical societies. (©1963 by Herblock, The Washington Post. With permission of the Herb Block Foundation, Washington, DC)

The NMA deserves credit for rescuing the black physician from the grip of prejudice and denial of his right to pursue a productive practice of medicine, and for fighting for his right to be included in the mainstream of American healthcare provision. It has also fought for the rights of black citizens and others to receive the highest standard of healthcare delivery by successfully battling for the passage of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid when the AMA was opposed to these entitlement programs. The group lobbied Congress in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and helped Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to bring pressure on the government to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1965. It supported Roe v. Wade in 1973 in the battle over a woman’s right to abortion, and it has been a backer of government backing of Planned Parenthood. (The AMA, on the other hand, was staunchly opposed to abortion, and in 1859 it urged that women who underwent abortion be criminalized, a stand that remained the organization’s official policy until 1967, and a stand that has been repeated by the Trump administration.)

In 1973, I was invited to represent the NMA on the iconic American news and talk morning television program The Today Show that airs on NBC. I was questioned as to why the NMA was needed since America already had the AMA, a question suggesting perhaps at duplication of effort, and thus a waste of money and resources. I briefly explained that, although both organizations shared a desire to improve healthcare delivery for the entire population, the NMA had the additional obligation of representing the special medical and societal needs of African Americans that the AMA had traditionally overlooked. In other words, I attempted to articulate the theme that “black lives matter ” in the medical context some decades before the concept was championed by civil rights advocates and protesters.

The NMA also strongly supported the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 [11], better known as the ACA or Obamacare, which has been a lifesaving healthcare reform measure. Unfortunately, this measure is being threatened with repeal at the present time under the new federal administration headed by President Trump. But however daunting this turn of events may seem, the NMA has a history of overcoming adversity during its long and turbulent history, and we are determined, as President Obama advised shortly after he was elected to his first term in 2008, to be among those Americans who were not afraid to “put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day” [12].

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