Who Needs a Doctor?: The Challenge of National Negro Health Week to the Medical Establishment, Lecture, March 6
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
6:00PM-7:30PM
Venue: The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029
Cost: $12 General Public | $8 Friends, Fellows, Members, Seniors | Free to Students with ID
Register HERE
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many whites believed that African Americans were inherently ill and doomed to extinction. To challenge this stereotype and demonstrate the race’s health, Booker T. Washington launched a public health campaign in 1915: National Negro Health Week. This talk examines the changes in, and challenges to, medical authority and public health in African American communities that the Week caused. The goal is to show how African American definitions of health differed from those of the medical establishment and the implications such differences created for the social control over, and empowerment of, African Americans.
About the Speaker: Paul Braff is a PhD candidate in American History at Temple University whose research focuses on African American history and public health during the twentieth century. He is a Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine and he has presented his work at the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, Shanghai University, Johns Hopkins University, and for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.