Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935-1954

Deluxe Jim Crow Timeline

|| xv || Deluxe Jim Crow Timeline 1935 Social Security Act Titles V and VI target the South with federal health funding and shift oversight of public health programs to Washington. 1936 Thomas Parran is appointed U.S. surgeon general and focuses the efforts of the Public Health Service on the South and on fighting syphilis as the primary public health problem. 1938 The Roosevelt administration releases the Report on the Economic Conditions of the South and the Technical Committee on Medical Care’s report on a national health program. Congress passes La Follette–Bulwinkle Venereal Disease Control Act. Southern Conference for Human Welfare founded in Birmingham, Alabama. Claude Pepper and Lister Hill elected to the U.S. Senate. In Gaines v. Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the legality of segregation depends on equal facilities within the state. Southern states begin funding scholarships to send black medical students to Meharry Medical College. 1939 Dr. Louis Wright of the naacp introduces the concept of racial parity into federal health legislation during the Wagner Health Bill hearings. Nearly all major national African American organizations testify in favor of national health reform, but the National Medical Association opposes a national health insurance provision as a threat to fee-for-service medicine and prioritizes ensuring that black physicians can treat their patients in federally funded facilities. 1940 Congress holds the first hearings on federal hospital construction legislation. || xvi || timeline 1943–44 Claude Pepper chairs the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education to investigate “the educational and physical fitness of the civilian population as related to national defense.” 1945 After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death, Harry S. Truman becomes the first president to fully support national health insurance and equal rights for African Americans. 1946 The Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act is enacted with a racial parity clause and a need-based allocation formula favoring the South. 1947 Oscar R. Ewing is named head of the Federal Security Agency, where he becomes the first high-ranking federal official to take a public stand in favor of full integration. The President’s Commission on Civil Rights releases To Secure These Rights. 1948 Fourteen southern governors sign the Southern Regional Education Compact. The Regional Medical School Bill, championed by Claude Pepper, fails to win congressional approval by one vote. Federal legislation establishes the National Institutes of Health, and Leonard Scheele replaces Thomas Parran as surgeon general, signaling a shift away from New Deal public health programs targeting the South and acute communicable diseases of poverty. Edith Mae Irby enrolls at the University of Arkansas, becoming the first black student to attend medical school at a desegregated southern university. 1949 The Pepper Federal Aid to Medical Education Bill, with an antidiscrimination clause, is defeated. 1951 The Universities of Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Louisville and the Medical College of Virginia have admitted at least one black medical student. 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court declares segregation inherently unequal and unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 1955 Enrollment of black medical students in predominantly white schools peaks at 236 during the preintegration era. timeline || xvii || 1956 The University of Florida enrolls its first medical school class. In Hawkins v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court declares segregation in higher education unconstitutional. 1961 Since 1949, the Southern Regional Education Board has disbursed $2.5 million to aid approximately five hundred black medical students and an additional $1 million for black dental students to attend Meharry Medical College, representing its largest single source of income. 1963 The U.S. Supreme Court lets stand the federal appeals court’s Simkins v. Cone decision, which declared unconstitutional HillBurton ’s “separate but equal” clause. 1964 The Civil Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination by any recipient of federal funds, promoting the full desegregation of southern health care, particularly after the passage of the Medicare amendments to Social Security the following year. This page intentionally left blank Deluxe Jim Crow This page intentionally left blank ...