Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination

by Alondra Nelson

Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism—its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination—was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.

Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.

The Black Panther Party’s understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy—and that struggle—continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Medicine, Politics, Health, Social Justice

289 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Alondra Nelson is professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she has served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science and director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Before arriving at Columbia, she was on the faculty of Yale University and received the Poorvu Award for interdisciplinary teaching excellence.

She is the author or editor of four books, including Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, for which she was recognized with the Mirra Komarovsky award as well as several other prizes. Her most recent book is The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. She is also an editor of Genetics and the Unsettled Past The Collision of DNA Race and History; Technicolor: Race Technology and Everyday Life; and "Afrofuturism" (a special issue of Social Text).

Her essays, reviews, and commentary have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Science, and the Boston Globe, among other publications. For more information, please see www.alondranelson.com. You can follow Alondra on Twitter.

Reviews

[Kameel · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW...this was such an insightful book....this author displayed a lot of knowledge about the era as well as the BPP...I was truly impressed and enlightened. Excellent Read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Would assign to a grad seminar in medical sociology. She recovers the history of the Black Panthers' health programs. Focuses on the institutional, ideological, and tactical goals these health programs served. (Institutional--the health programs served as an alternative to the thin democracy and inadequate programs of the War on Poverty; Ideological--linked radical theorists like Guevara, Mao, and Franz Fanon to the Panthers' critique of 20th century social inequality; Tactical--corrected the perception that the Panthers were just a violent radical group.) Two chapters show how the Panthers also engaged in critiques of science (through their health education and screening programs for sickle cell and through their opposition to a UCLA center that would biologize the study of violence). Along the way, Nelson shows how some elements of the Panthers' message were co-opted by mainstream actors, in some cases lending superficial support to the civil rights movement, but without triggering the kind of deep, societal transformation that would be needed to eradicate racism.

[silly_ebadu · Rating 5 out of 5]

the disprovement of racist psychiatric and geneticists’ ideas is my fave genre🤌🏼 “violence is a manifestation of social dis-ease” BAR

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a fabulous read. Nelson knows the period, and the Panthers, inside out. She also has a suburb capacity to write about a focused thesis - the role and impact of the Panthers' health programs on both society and the Panthers - while drawing on the broader context and understanding without every overwhelming the narrative. The story itself is the best kind of inspiring - not remotely an uncritical look, but one which allows the humanity and the passion and the mistakes and the persistence to shine through. Don't get me wrong, it is a scholarly book, just a very *good* scholarly book, that allows the reader to engage emotionally while the narrator never loses the crows eye, impassive, view.

Nelson evokes the atmosphere of the time seemingly without trying, a time when so much seemed possible, and groups and people thought and acted outside the rules (I couldn't help wondering, as I read this, what Newton would make of a rally chanting "Hands Up, Don't Shoot", and how much has, and hasn't changed).

Many years ago, I read and studied aspects of the Panthers 'political' thought. At the time I, and the milieu I mixed in, ignored the social programs the Panthers were involved in mostly as reformism. But now, I find a deep interest in how the Panthers became of their community, not apart from it imagining they were striding in front. I really appreciated the parts of this book that connected the Panthers study and theory to the practice of building healthcare systems, particularly the discussion about the role of Che, Mao and Fanon in influencing the Panthers view of health. I would have loved more on the influence of the 1960s government programs.

Lest I make this sound too fan-sy, the critique of the Panthers role, particularly in examining the tricky area of how Sickle Cell activism drifted around concepts of immutable genetic race is sharp, and nicely thought provoking. The discussion about the unfolding campaign against a psych centre to study violence is, while I thought the least engaging part of the book, used to illustrate some of the contradictions in the approach.

We live at a time now where social programs in my country are being decimated - particularly services for victims/survivors of rape and domestic violence. At these times, engaging with issues of health, the body, and the right to community run services with an overt critique of oppressions seems more useful than ever to me.

[Deena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! The Black Panthers really did so much. This book dives into their healthcare work, free clinics, advocacy, and education. It’s so important and I feel like something today’s activism hasn’t carried over as much, but it’s so important for us to be on top of our community’s well being.

[Raja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a shoutout to the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program on her instagram story today, introducing millions to the power of alternative institution building (as Body and Soul's author terms it). If AOC had a little more space, she might've described the other program the Panthers rolled out across all chapters in 1970: the Peoples' Free Medical Clinic. Author Alondra Nelson highlights the landmark achievements of this program in her book, including the following.
-Operating a 24 hour free ambulance service in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
-Forcing Chicago health agencies to change their policy of "non-notification" when they found out a (usually Black) patient had sickle cell anemia
-Stopping a Reagan-supported research center that wanted to help establish a biological (read:racist) basis for violence

This is the first academic book I've read about an activist movement. I think it'll establish a high standard. Nelson does a great job contextualizing the Panther's actions, giving great background on relevant events and headlines, adjacent groups, and applicable social theory. She also provides a nuanced assessment of the impact of the Panthers' medical programs (on lives and policy), without denigrating the Panthers as a recklessly violent group or over-valorizing them as unimpeachable heroes.

There's a lot that's applicable to social movements beyond a health, or even a civil rights, context.
-The co-optation of radical movements by more moderate groups (or even the federal government)
-How alternative institution building can provide support to the vulnerable, but perhaps primarily helps politicize and gather support for a cause
-The difficulties of funding social movements (the Panthers' health programs took a lot of money from churches, pharma, and defense programs, and still had difficulty staffing their clinics)

Unfortunately, the book was a kind of boring read because of the trappings of academic books. There's a lot of "here's what I'm going to say, then I'll say it, and here's what I said". The prose is also quite dry in parts and academic debates are regularly exhumed and dissected at length. Still Body and Soul gave me a lot to think about so it gets 4 stars instead of 3.

[Iejones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I am a historian and like to challenge myself with reading outside of my preferred time period. My preferred time 1880-1930. So why the 1960s? The image of the BPP as a gang of socialist, Black nationalist with a bend toward violence has been the media fed image for those post-1960s people. I know a number of scholars who work on this topic and their research has proven a deeper and more complex network of justice fighters and crusaders. Nelson's work explores the social action performed by BPP members in Califoria who sought to liberate Black and poor people from the injustice of disease and early death from lack of medical attention and misdiagnosis. Simply problems like hypertension, diabetes, sickle cell anemia and other medical issues that disproportionately effect Black people in particular and poor people in general - in their belief was an extention of capitialism and white supremacy. To combat this - BPP members solicited medical professionals and opened up free clinics and offered preventative treatment and referred/escorted people to hospitals. INCREDIBLE! I doubt if anyone outside of California or BPP history knew this fact? Another tidbit was the free breakfast programs BPP created which the government adopted and started in urban settings. Nelson's book is a bit heavy with medical jargon - but a PDR - Physician's Desk Reference -- is not needed. You hear her passion and see the circular - impact health care, access and poverty still have in the age of Obamacare.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a refreshing, comprehensive look at community health efforts, about most of which I hadn't previously known! Loved the balance between an analysis of the health/medicalization discourses producing "illness" *and* activist responses to neglect/abuse –– hard to strike, but Nelson does it deftly!

[Ayman Fadel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Quando dou comida aos pobres chamam-me de santo. Quando pergunto por que eles são pobres chamam-me de comunista."

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara (1909 – 1999), Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, 1964 to 1985

Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson.
University of Minnesota Press, 2011, 289 pp.

Professor Alondra Nelson (Twitter) has written a book which all activists should read. It focuses on the advocacy, activism and ideology of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in healthcare.


The BPP saw healthcare in the United States as proof of white supremacy and regarded its provision as a necessity for movement building and outreach. Over time, it required each of its branches to establish a community health center. The health centers were required to staff or have access to biomedical professionals and empower the patients in decisions regarding their treatment. They promoted a view of health beyond the biomedical model. Poor health outcomes among black Americans were the inevitable result of policies which limited their political clout and economic opportunities, and only revolutionary socialism could address these issues. Healthcare was one example of a good which should be provided regardless of profit, and these community health centers were proof of this concept.

Most fascinating to me was the BPP's work in the field of sickle cell anemia and its resistance to the medicalization of violence.

Sickle cell anemia is familiar to me. My father co-authored a paper in this field, and I mentioned it in "Health, Public," an encyclopedia entry I wrote for Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, edited by Richard Juang and Noelle Morrisette. When I was a child, I was diagnosed with anemia, but I never had any symptoms. Later physicians told me that I likely had fewer, larger red blood cells than the "norm" (i.e. northern European) as part of the genetic legacy of peoples from malaria-endemic regions.

While black American health activists had been addressing sickle cell conditions to the extent their resources permitted, a 1970 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Robert Scott seemed to bring together all of the BPP's talking points:
Health care priority for sickle cell anemia (SCA) should be based on its prevalence, severity, and on a standard of support set for similar conditions. Sickle cell anemia occurs in about one in 500 Negro births and median survival is still only 20 years of age. In 1967 there were an estimated 1,155 new cases of SCA, 1,206 of cystic fibrosis, 813 of muscular dystrophy, and 350 of phenylketonuria. Yet volunteer organizations raised $1.9 million for cystic fibrosis, $7.9 million for muscular dystrophy, but less than $100,000 for SCA. National Institutes of Health grants for many less common hereditary illnesses exceed those for SCA. Prevalence data in cities with sizeable black populations show that SCA is a major public health consideration. More appropriate priority for SCA depends on improved public and professional understanding of its importance.
The BPP began learning how to conduct screenings, and, when a new screening procedure which didn't require a blood draw and whose cost was minimal emerged, the BPP launched widespread screening campaigns in public places. It also fundraised for these efforts and attempted to mobilize researchers who shared its social vision of health to research cures and treatments for sickle cell conditions. It published articles and its leaders gave interviews refuting white supremacists who used sickle cell conditions as evidence that black Africans and their descendants were genetically inferior to white Europeans.

In 1972, researchers at University of California at Los Angeles drafted plans to create the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence and sought financial support from Governor Ronald Reagan and the California legislature. The BPP and allies saw these groups as defining violence in the United States as a medical problem requiring a medical solution, i.e. medicalization or biologization. The BPP rejected this view, as exemplified by H Rap Brown's (Jamil al-Amin) famous quote, "violence is as American as apple pie." A coalition of groups was successful in convincing the state of California to cease supporting research along these lines.

These BPP successes, however, did not result in ending morbidity and mortality discrepancies among races in the United States, much less socialist revolution. There are of course many reasons for this, including police repression. But in the cases of sickle cell anemia and the medicalization of violence, liberal solutions from the biomedical world, namely increasing resources developed for sickle cell diagnosis, treatment and research and extending the protection of medical ethics to prisoners in United States jails, who would have been the experimental subjects in the UCLA center's research, blunted the BPP's radical arguments.

And yet this legacy of activists providing healthcare to the people the state ignores lives on. I have given some money to University Muslim Medical Association Community Clinic in Los Angeles over the last 10 years, and I learned from Dr. Nelson's book that a former BPP member and worker at one of its clinics, Norma Armour, helped found it.

The Islamic Medical Association of North America publishes a guide to operating a charity clinic. It has also published video recordings of sessions where people involved in these clinics discuss their operations.

To the extent that any of these clinics focus on patients' participation in decision-making and on a social vision of health, it is part of the BPP legacy.

Dr. Nelson has a 16-minute video from Book-TV about this book.

Her most recent book is Genetics and the Unsettled PastThe Collision Between DNA, Race, and History which she co-edited with Keith Wailoo and Catherine Lee. (Rutgers University Press, Paperback, 9780813552552, 370pp.) (Twitter)

Updated October 11, 2014: The concept of medicalizing away social phenomenon is at the heart of Edward Said's Orientalism and its Reader's Digest version, Covering Islam. Define a group. Develop a methodology to use in the study of that group which is not used on any other group. And, then, what do you know, you find that there are factors unique to that group which cause a phenomenon. I've blogged a lot on the War on Terror, but the reading I'd recommend which has several examples of medicalizing is Arun Kundnani's The Muslims are Coming!.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is extremely informative, well-researched, and accessible.

[Shadira · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination, Alondra Nelson recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the Black Panther Party’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism — its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination — was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.

Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services.

In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.

The Black Panther Party’s understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy — and that struggle — continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care

[Lawrence Grandpre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good job framing panther medical interventions as oppositional to limited notions of biological citizenship and toward more expansive motions of "social health". False sort in ways typical of academic analysis. A failure to interrogate the material beyond limited pre packaged academic orthodoxy. The book name checks fanon but fails to interrogate the Praxis of panther health interventions through the lens of his work. The book shows an undo focus on medical essentialist claims by the Panthers rather than exploring the interpersonal, cultural methodologies of human social service provision which would have made the text useful to service providers. Most notably, the boom claims panther methodologies around health reflect focucuatian notions of biopoltics where scholarship shows foucault stole many of his theories around biopoltics from the Pathers. This seemingly minor point is very improtsnt has it shows the tendency to coopt panther radicalism into academic orthodox, the exact proactive the books claims the pathers resistance as their sickle cell work was coopted by Nixon. Someday the American academy will produce academics capable of producing work actually usefull to black people on the move...I'm not holding much breath for that day. This book should have been way better than this.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was pretty fucking awesome; I'd say it's required reading for people interested in Disability Studies, health activists, and people working as health professionals. Nelson details the BPP's multi-pronged approach to health activism, citing the profound influence of Fanon's critiques of psychiatry as a colonial weapon in The Wretched of the Earth. She explores the formation of the Free People's Health Clinics as the main framework of their health efforts, analyzes their grassroots campaign about Sickle Cell Anemia and its subsequent co-optation by the state, and details the successful campaign against an "Anti-Violence Research Center" at UCLA that came from a broad coaltion of activists and subsequent action at the legislative level. At times it was a bit repetitive because of the academic writing style, but all in all, it's a pivotal and much-needed work. YAY.

[JC Sevart · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started this book I was worried she was going to declaw the Panthers in terms of ideology and methods. I personally admire Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and the BPP as a whole and have seen too many attempts made to in one breath praise them and in the next decry their violence or pretend they weren't inspired by Fanon, Mao, and Guevara. But I was delighted to find that Nelson did not do that, instead she leaned into how those ideologies and militancy led to disciplined, organized free healthcare for communities all over the country as well as the BPP's work with Sickle Cell Anemia activism and the fight against the Reagan governorship's attempted funding of racist 'violence centers' (which were meant to experiment on prison inmates to research biomedical reasons for violent/criminal tendencies). I had a great time reading this

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Nelson provides a comprehensive and enlightening account of the incredible work done by the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the area of health care provision to and health justice for African Americans. This is a lesser known aspect of the BPP’s mission, but is a central part of the work that continues to be done to address health disparities and examine health and social outcomes from an antiracist lens. Highly recommended read for anyone interested in social justice, public health history, and the transformative work of radical social movements.

[Hakan Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of books. I read a lot of history books. I read a lot of books on black american history. This book made me feel ignorant. This book also made me thirsty for more. There are so many people responsible for the progress I depend on and this book shines a spotlight on many of these groups and individuals. It also shows that the Black Panther Party was much more than a group of black folk who liked to carry around guns to make white people nervous.

[Cece Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who didn’t learn about the Black Panther Party until college, I really appreciated this book and the ways it highlighted the Party’s work in bettering the community and motives as well. If you really want to learn about The Black Panthers this is a great pickup.

[Geleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to learn more about the history of radical health and wellness movements in the u.s. Really inspiring!

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book. The US legal history was a bit dull for me, but I loved reading about the party’s engagement with medical radicals like Fanon and Guevara, and also the way they drew on Mao to direct medical clinics as ways to serve the people. So many amazing medical campaigns carried out in socialist countries have been deliberately unrecognized by other hegemonic imperialist countries within which very well-funded cutting edge medical research is carried out while so many lack access to basic healthcare.

Alondra Nelson was actually to be the president of 4S this year, which runs the major STS conference each year, but she got marshalled away from her teaching at Columbia into the belly of the beast and is now serving in the Biden administration, which unfortunately affected my reading of this book. I do hope Nelson is able to affect change, but I have no illusions that the Biden administration is not a working-class administration and its interests are not aligned with the same people the Black Panthers were fighting for.

Complete tangent: I was actually discussing this book at a friend’s place last week over Chai. We were doing a small Japanese puzzle of the Sagrada Familia which I had bought for them as a joke... because Orwell mentioned the building in Homage to Catalonia. It was the only church building the anarchists didn’t blow up during the Spanish Civil War, but Orwell had wished that they had because he found it so ugly. Anyway, we were talking about the Black Panthers, and I brought up Nelson writing a book about Black communists running free medical clinics now serving in the Biden Administration, which led to this whole conversation about how Colin Powell was a war criminal and why the fuck hadn’t Kissinger died already. And a few days later Colin Powell dies… and Kissinger is still alive.

Anyway, this book was interesting and I loved reading about doctors and other medical practitioners who became involved in these Black Panther run clinics. The sections on Maoist sloganeering and 'serving the people' reminded me of something Cornel West recently said while speaking to students at my school over Zoom:

“The real thing in the struggle is love for the people, serving the people. Fred Hampton [or Huey Newton, I can’t remember, and this was rendered inaudible in the transcript], when the police put the gun to his head, said “I will kill you if you don’t stop.” And he said, “I stand for the people.” You don’t have to go into Black Panther ideologies to know… My mother who was a progressive Christian said, “That Black man loves me.” She knew he was the real thing… That’s why the Black Panther Party put Martin Luther King Jr on their wall. Was he a communist? No. He was a socialist. He was pink, not red. But they knew he loved the people. So that’s true with all the great ones.”

[Tibby]

This was a really fascinating look at medical activism and how the Black Panther Party continued and changed the practice of providing healthcare advocacy and programs while the Party was active. Nelson was pretty clear eyed about what worked and didn't work and what the lasting impact was of the various programs started by the Party. While the Panthers did a lot of good with their programs they needed better funding and also their criticism sort of shot them in the foot when social and governmental attitudes and programs shifted to fix the problems the BPP pointed out. They didn't make a solid pivot when, for example, the government and the medical establishment began taking Sickle Cell Anemia more seriously and testing for it more rigorously. Still, Nelson is clear that the Panthers did a lot of good with their programs and helped to shift popular opinion around medical discrimination.

I knew of the programs discussed in the book, but I was not familiar with them at the depth they were discussed here. It was interesting to hear more about what came before the BPP and also where they took medical activism given their Ten Point Plan and their political position. I also liked that a lot of what was happening on the ground in the Party when it came to their medical programs was done by rank and file and even outside volunteers. This is not a book about the Panthers that focuses on Elaine Brown or Huey Newton or Fred Hampton who do appear, but are not the central focus. I think I came away with an understanding that it's possible for these types of experiments where communities needs are met are possible and can be successful and that while the landscape of what might need to be done today is different, it's worth carrying on the torch the Panther's picked up.

I listened to the audiobook and it was very good. The book itself is a wee bit academic, but still very readable and accessible, especially if you're interested in the BPP or medical activism.

[Karen Kohoutek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A valuable historical perspective, doing the important job of shining light on the Black Panther Party's work with medical survival programs, establishing free clinics, empowering community members to do health screenings and lab testing, and fighting against the idea of violence as biologically linked to black maleness, rather than reflecting social conditions. Plus a good overview of earlier Black efforts to fight medical discrimination and related issues. I definitely learned some new things, like how the AMA claimed to be desegregated, while making doctors join through local chapters, of which many were segregating, thus shutting doctors out from the organization, even where membership was required for employment. There's a lot of interesting insight like this, things many people aren't aware of because it's a specialist topic.

I don't know if it was the author, or the editor/publisher, but this does lean toward academic dryness, very much in the prevailing norm of "in this chapter I will" and "in this chapter I have." I know this could well have been imposed, directly or indirectly, and not the author's fault, but that did cause me to think a bit that I might not have bought it if I'd looked it over more first. But I'd still have read it! And the one-time prevalence of radical health clinics and free clinics, and the drive to democratize health encounters, has an extra resonance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very academic in style, and the Introductory chapter in particular is quite dense. That having been said, there is a huge amount of great information here. If you are not already familiar with the Black Panthers and activism in the late sixties and early seventies, this may not be the best primer, but if you are patient and willing do some additional background reading, you will find yourself (as I did) educating your friends about the extent of the Panther's social activism over drinks. I have a few (extremely minor) quibbles-- the identification of Linus Pauling as an "avowed Communist" is not something I could find documentation on, and would have appreciated a footnote about; and the characterization of Dr. Tolbert Small as having learned acupuncture in the two weeks he visited China with the Panthers overlooks the needling practice he did upon returning to the US and discounts the extensive knowledge base underlying Chinese medicine; even Mao's "Barefoot Doctors" received months of training before being deployed.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather dry read, something like reading a thesis instead of a book.

Still, it thoroughly highlights an obscure part of American history, mostly around the Black Panthers and allies approach to combating injustice and racism in American medicine. There is a lot about sickle cell anemia and studies purporting a biological (racial) foundation to violence. More obscure is how the The Winston-Salem chapter of the Black Panther Party started an ambulance service in 1973 to provide better ambulance service to the black community. Members took EMT and first-aid classes and were certified as emergency medical technicians.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit about the medical programs run by The Black Panther party in several American cities.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on sickle cell anemia (what it is, why it affects the black population specifically and the American Government lack of care of this disorder.

This is a great book that explains how the Black Panthers were able to accomplish everything from sickle cell testing, hot meals, groceries, after school programs for children and making sure that the most vulnerable American citizens were not overlooked any longer.

[josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

the chapter on sickle cell advocacy/community organizing (and eventual govt cooptation) was rly interesting to me. this book is so dense with so many different threads and frankly i wish she would've dropped a few of them to dive in deeper on the dynamics of local mutual aid and the theoretical frameworks ppl undergirded their organizing with but i can't complain about being given too much info. would love to see the conclusion on katrina/resurgence of community health clinics expanded into another book

[Ell, Ess Jaeva · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are medical issues that plague the poor and some specific to Black Americans regardless of income. The lack of attention to these populations, during the days of the Panthers and historically, shameful. But this book muddles the minutia of ailments, with minutia about public policy, with minutia of systematic discrimination, with assumptions, generalizations and overviews of how the Panthers reacted.

It reads like a nicely stated, well researched account of something slightly off the expected topic. Good info but along the periphery of the target.

[Maggie]

my main critique is that it's written in a very academic way that can be repetitive and hard to get through. I think the book would have been more exciting as a more plainspoken retelling of this history. but I learned a lot of new things especially about Sickle Cell Anemia. I wanted to learn more about the Panther's use of acupuncture but it was only mentioned a few times. overall a great read and useful for the healers and medics of the revolution since health and wellness activism has felt like such an unsung/underexplored niche of radical politics before this book!

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of books and articles that mention these organizing efforts, but never knew much more about them than that they existed. This was a very interesting foray into the details of some of the organizing efforts, especially that around sickle cell anemia, medical experiments, and psychiatric abuse. Not an easy read, but worth it. I believe it's likely an academic thesis but it's accessibility written.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative book that got stronger as it went. I found the chapters on sickle cell anemia and the violence center(!) during the Reagan era to be especially enlightening. An accessible and relatively short piece of work as well, which acts a good primer to somebody who is hoping to expand their knowledge.

[Лариса · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content is well-researched and very important, but the writing is very heavy. I would not recommend this to anyone that doesn't typically read works meant for an academic audience. I would love to see the contents adapted into something more accessible that uses plain language so this important history could better reach people outside of academia.