The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care »

John Dittmer received the Bancroft Prize, and several other awards, for Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. He is a professor of history at DePauw University

The Medical Committee for Human Rights was organized in 1964 to support civil rights activists during Mississippi's Freedom Summer. MCHR volunteers exposed racism within the American Medical Association, desegregated southern hospitals, set up free clinics in inner cities, and created the model for the community health center. They were early advocates of single-payer universal health insurance. In The Good Doctors, celebrated historian John Dittmer gives an insightful account of a group of idealists whose message and example are an inspiration to all who believe that "Health Care is a Human Right."

Dick Maxwell - Library Journal

Emerging during the civil rights struggle in the South in the early 1960s, the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) suffered from a chronic identity crisis and continuous internal turmoil but still left a significant legacy. First providing support for civil rights workers, the many doctors, nurses, and others who were part of MCHR also challenged the American Medical Association's tolerance of racism in its affiliates, worked to desegregate and bring more equity to health care, and helped give rise to the widespread creation of community health centers. Disagreements over organizational structure and where MCHR's political focus should be led to its gradual dissolution in the 1980s. Dittmer (history, DePauw Univ.; Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi) uses interviews plus other primary and secondary sources to shed light on an organization that has remained largely unchronicled. Clearly presented and absorbing, this is recommended for public libraries as well as academic and medical libraries with medical history collections.

Contents Preface....................ix
Prologue: Two Roads to Atlantic City....................1
1. The Good Doctors....................18
2. Freedom Summer in Mississippi....................38
3. The Medical Arm of the Civil Rights Movement....................61
4. Selma and Jackson....................85
5. Summer, 1965....................110
6. The Last March....................130
7. The War at Home....................157
8. The Medical Arm of the New Left....................178
9. The Young Turks....................205
10. Health Care is a Human Right....................229
11. Years of Decline....................251
Coda....................265
Afterword: The MCHR Legacy....................273
Acknowledgments....................283
Notes....................285
Index....................000