Author: Alondra Nelson ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDFBetween its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism—its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination—was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.
Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.
The Black Panther Party’s understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy—and that struggle—continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care.
- File Size: 2193 KB
- Print Length: 288 pages
- Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (October 20, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B006LKOEPU
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,963 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #97 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Health Care Delivery
- #97 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Health Care Delivery
Download Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination PDF
Dr. Nelson demonstrates a thoroughly researched academically focused writing style that draws many memories of the '60's through the '80's together as the Panther Party sought greater social and legal justice.
Her thesis extends the contention that the writings of Mao, Dr. Fanning, and Che Guevara led the Party to approach the issue of improving African Americans' health care access and availability. She expresses the view that this was the driving premise behind the Party opening a clinic in Berkeley, CA, next to North Oakland, and eventually requiring that affiliated chapters of the Party establish health clinics in their areas. Although she acknowledges that the West Oakland Health Center pharmacist and Dr. Small, who worked part time at the West Oakland Health Center, assisted in the Berkeley Clinic, as Dr. Small did much more for the Party over time, she avoids one major point.
The West Oakland Health Center was the first federally funded locally controlled non-profit entity providing health care in its community in the United States. It was started by leveraging almost 1 million dollars of Public Health Service monies (demonstration grant funds) out of an earmarked 16 million which combined with several other in-kind and cash grants to amount to over 3 million dollars to start the Center which survives 54 years after initiation. The Panthers wanted community control and they saw how it worked in West Oakland, the place of the Party's birth. They were not able, in the period of '67-'69, to work with other community groups that sought similar goals, although they could have been able to join the West Oakland Health Committee if they had the stability and sense of common cause that was needed at that time.
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