Evolution of the Black Physician: Medical Education and Treatment Facilities for Blacks

Abstract

Following the end of the Civil War and the beginning of emancipation (1863–1865), blacks were cast into a situation of having to be responsible for providing their own medical care. Freedom from bondage meant that they no longer could depend on their former slave masters to care for them when they were ill or injured, and they had little or no money to go to white hospitals or physicians, even if they had been accepted for treatment. In this chapter, the remarkable efforts that were made by blacks to survive in the aftermath of a war which was fought to determine the destiny of millions of blacks who were caught in between two factions of whites will be reviewed. It includes a description of how blacks attempted and succeeded in creating their own system of healthcare “against the odds,” as stated by Wilbur H. Watson in his excellent book of the same name.

….until that day when a man’s color will not lead to his embarrassment….

until the day when equality of opportunity is incorporated into the actual codes and practices of every American community, we will vitally need our own institutions.

—Black surgeon Frederick Douglass Stubbs, 1944 [1]

The Negro Hospital in America, like almost all Negro institutions of service and learning, was born in protest to the transitional modes of segregation and discrimination.

—Black surgeon Frederick Douglass Stubbs, 1944 [1]