Deluxe Jim Crow: Racial and Regional Equalization in Health Policy from New Deal to Civil Rights Movement

FAIN: FT-55509-07

Karen Kruse Thomas
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL 32306-0001)

In the 15 years before the 1954 Brown decision, southern politicians, black medical activists, public health professionals, and New Deal liberals attempted to equalize health services, facilities, and professional training for blacks. The integrationist physician Dr. Montague Cobb derided these efforts as "deluxe Jim Crow." Equalization was more successful in health care than education due to significant federal and state funding. The New Deal's "third act" of regional uplift in the South, the nation's most politically powerful yet poorest and most diseased region, fundamentally shaped the civil rights movement by providing its first national legislative victory and a gradual rather than abrupt path to full integration.