by Jack D. Ellis (Author), Alan I. Marcus (Foreword by)
A comprehensive historical account of race and healthcare in the segregated South
Physicians for the People chronicles the remarkable stories of 241 Black doctors who practiced medicine in Alabama during the Jim Crow era. Historian Jack D. Ellis reveals the ingenuity and resilience of these trailblazing doctors who defied segregation by establishing hospitals and clinics and providing vital healthcare to underserved Black communities.
This meticulously researched work draws on archival sources, oral histories, and an unparalleled database to dismantle the myth of a monolithic medical system in the Jim Crow South. Jack D. Ellis argues that the post-Civil War lives of Black physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and midwives hold special significance, illuminating both the causes of health care disparities among African Americans and the reasons for their continued underrepresentation in the medical professions.
Offering much of interest to students and scholars of Black history, medical history, and the civil rights movement, Physicians for the People exposes the deliberate exclusion faced by Black doctors within the white medical establishment and their ongoing fight for racial equality in medicine.
Author Biography
Jack D. Ellis is professor emeritus of history, University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is author of four books, most recently Beside the Troubled Waters: A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town coauthored with Sonnie Wellington Hereford III.
Number of Pages: 244
Publication Date: February 15, 2025
