A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D.

Chapter Eight: Health Care for All

We say we have the best medical facilities in the world. Yet they aren’t made available to all citizens. Colored people, the aged, and poor whites are sadly neglected groups. — Edward C. Mazique, 1960 In health as in liberty, the world cannot stand half sick and half well. — Edward C. Mazique, 1959 His year as president of the NMA ended but the struggle for Medicare, aid to the emerging African nations, and the other causes Eddie believed in so strongly continued. While president, Eddie organized a trip to Eastern Europe that was to begin only three days after the convention ended. Eddie stated four reasons “which prompted [him] to undertake a trip for studying advancements and medical care in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics along with France and England.” The first was as a partial implementation of the NMA’s international program, which endorsed exchange of medical personnel with other nations. Second, it was seen as an attempt to advance understanding and dissemination of knowledge with world neighbors who, because of transportation and communication advances, have become closer. The third rationale, and clearly the most important for Eddie, was to participate in programs of technical and medical exchange that would help in combating the ravages of disease. It was an amplification of this broad purpose that justified taking a close look at the nationalized medical programs of the Socialist countries so that their 195 CHAPTER EIGHT [ Health Care for All achievements, techniques, and services could be evaluated. This was the main reason for the trip, a chance to get more publicity for the cause of “nationalized” medicine. It was also a chance to dispel some of the myths promulgated by the AMA about the flaws of socialized medicine. The final reason given for the delegation was “a realization of the urgency for promoting goodwill and peace in this imperiled world between the American people and the peoples of the socialist countries.” In that fall of , when the black doctors who had signed up to take this educational trip were getting ready to make their journey, there was little doubt that goodwill was needed. In the initial stages of planning, relations with the Socialist countries were improving. Nikita S. Khrushchev, chairman of the Ministers of the USSR, had made a trip to the United States in ; President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to meet at a summit meeting in Paris with Khrushchev and other leaders in May ; and Eisenhower was scheduled for a visit to the USSR in the same year. On May  the Soviet Union shot down an American Lockheed U- plane that was flying over one thousand miles inside of the Soviet Union border, and relations between the two powers slipped to a new low. The United States initially denied that the plane was spying until the Soviets produced the American pilot, Gary Powers, and a confession. President Eisenhower took responsibility for the incident, and Khrushchev labeled it as an act of aggression and refused to participate with Eisenhower in the summit meeting scheduled for May  in Paris. To make his point even more strongly, Khrushchev went farther and postponed the Eisenhower trip to the USSR scheduled for June by stating: “At the present we cannot display such cordiality toward the President of the United States since the provocative flights of the American military reconnaissance planes have created conditions obviously unfavorable for this visit.” The Soviets brought their complaints to the United Nations Security Council but no actions were taken. A trip that would have aroused controversy even if relations between the nations were at their best now became a potential threat to the careers of the doctors signed on for the journey. To their credit, everyone who was scheduled did participate. In April , Lewis Giles Jr., a public relations consultant hired to organize the trip, called Larry Still, a Jet reporter, to see if he would accompany the doctors. Mr. Still had a great deal of difficulty selling his participation to his superiors because of the extensiveness of the tour and the controversy surrounding socialized medicine. After the U- incident made his editors even more leery, Still had to agree to use his vacation time and even pay much of his own way. Many of the details of the trip 196 [ CHAPTER EIGHT were recorded in newspaper and magazine articles, but the ambience and the interpersonal relationships among the doctors and...