Description
Book SynopsisDo we want to perpetuate a Jim Crow health system? A brilliant, idealistic physician asked that question in Alabama in 1966. Her answer was noit led to her murder. Unearthing the truth of Jean Cowsert's life and death is a central concern of David Barton Smith's Race, Murder, and Medicine. Unearthing the grim history of our healthcare system is another. Race-related disparities in American death rates, exacerbated once again by the Covid-19 pandemic, have persisted since the birth of the modern U.S. medical system a century ago. A unique but fundamentally racist history has prevented the United States from providing the kind of healthcare assurances that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations. The underlying story is one of political, medical, and bureaucratic machinations, all motivated by a deliberate, racist design. In Race, Murder, and Medicine, David Barton Smith traces the Jean Cowsert story and the cold case of her death as a through line to explain the construct
Trade ReviewMalicious Intent investigates two mysteries: what caused the 1967 death of Jean Cowsert, a courageous physician in Mobile, and why extreme health disparities persist in the United States. David Barton Smith finds the solution of both in the history of racism in America, of which he is a foremost chronicler."—Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, author of
Health Affairs'
Following the Affordable Care Act blog (2010-2017)
"David Barton Smith sees health care reform as having been stifled by racism, and in that sense Dr. Cowsert's death serves as a metaphor—a way to humanize and personalize the struggles and costs of health reform."—Keith Wailoo, author of
How Cancer Crossed the Color Line“Dr. Smith’s work represents a significant contribution to the literature on structural racism and the history of healthcare, providing important context to much-needed contemporary discussions of the subject.”—Stuart Wexler, author of
America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United StatesTable of Contents
- Preface
- Part I. Race and Recovery of Memory
- 1. A Forgotten Death
- 2. Jim Crow Medicine
- 3. Death of Universal Healthcare
- Part II. Mobile
- 4. Old Wounds
- 5. Civil Rights Struggles
- 6. Local Medicine
- Part III. Jean Cowsert, M.D.
- 7. Preparation
- 8. An Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object
- 9. Eliminating the Jim Crow Cages
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
