In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

ix Acknowledgments Julie Saville, Tom Holt, Amy Dru Stanley, and Ken Warren helped me to shape what grew from an unfocused interest in medical care and African American history into a book manuscript. Julie Saville’s questions helped me to connect this project with phenomena in the wider Atlantic world. Ken Warren’s patience with a historian who wanted to write about fiction has been a consistent and comforting force. Amy Stanley’s vigorous inquiries and insightful critiques have strengthened my scholarship. Tom Holt has been a model adviser. He took on this project and revealed a true interest in and knowledge of American medical history. Conversations and correspondence with him have helped me to see the need to rework my arguments and to see the value in opening up an interesting question even when the answer remains elusive. His own imaginative work on African American history and his sensitivity to nuance provided me and many others with a valuable framework in which to ground our own inquiries. This project would have been impossible without the remarkable Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland. The tireless and careful work of the editors and staff there has resulted in the archive to which I turned time after time. Leslie Rowland, editor at the Project, scholar, and teacher, has been an exemplary mentor. She welcomed me to Maryland, answered my questions, pointed me toward (and away from) sources, read my work, and gave me practical feedback. I am in awe of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project’s work and look forward to returning as I begin other scholarly endeavors. I was lucky to have many friends and relatives in Chicago who pulled hard and encouraged me all along the way. They also helped me to revel in the richness of the nonacademic parts of my life. The health workers at the Chicago Women’s Health Center first showed me the power that good medical practice can bestow on people who have been socially marginalized . I received immeasurable support from friends on the playground of the Murray Language Academy. I relied upon my family in Chicago, par- x • Acknowledgments ticularly Chris Long and Newton Ellison Long, to talk about the African American experience and to help me draw out the role of medical practice in African American history. Newton Long did not live to see the completion of this project, but the interest he showed in it and his ability to connect its questions to broader themes in American society were nourishing . Charles Long has encouraged and challenged me in my scholarly work. His impatience with my pace spurred me on to completion. After a move to Williams College, I accumulated even more scholarly debts. A fellowship from the Newberry Library allowed me to return to Chicago for some weeks to research and write. The dean of the faculty at Williams and the Oakley Center there provided grants that released me from teaching duties at key moments. A generous fellowship from Harvard ’s W. E. B. DuBois Center for African and African American Studies enabled me to continue my research at the center. I was fortunate to have Amber Moulton as a research assistant there. I am grateful to Henry Louis Gates for his presence as a lively interlocutor and to Susan Reverby for sisterly and scholarly support during that year and beyond. Pat Sullivan, whom I met at the DuBois, generously encouraged me to pursue publishing at the University of North Carolina Press. It would have been impossible for me to accept the DuBois fellowship without the incredible generosity and hospitality of Amy Null, Andrew Budson, and their children, Leah and Danny. They opened their home to me for many months. I am blessed to count them as friends. Many friends and colleagues have read drafts of this work, provided comments, and kindly pointed out errors, making the work stronger. I am particularly grateful to Laurie Green, Quincy Mills, Adam Biggs, Tess Chakkalakal, Merida Rua, Guillaume Aubert, Peter Starenko, Todd Savitt , and Neville Hoad. I am grateful to Sharla Fett and Keith Wailoo, manuscript readers for the University of North Carolina Press, who took this work seriously and offered extraordinarily insightful suggestions for making it better. I also owe a debt to my colleagues in the history and Africana studies departments at Williams College as well as to Lori DuBois and Emery Shriver, reference librarians. Kenda Mutongi has been particularly generous, reading drafts and offering insights, challenges, and...

Share