Category: Talks

Lecture: The Long Fight for Civil Rights in Healthcare & Medicine

I am pleased to announce that my research on  Jim Crow discrimination and segregation in healthcare has been selected for inclusion in the Delaware Humanities Speakers Bureau catalog for 2024. This opportunity allows me to share my findings with a broad audience and shed light on a largely unexamined aspect of our history.

Dr. W. M. Henry dover, Delaware
Dr. W. M. Henry, an African American physician, and surgeon, established a practice in Dover in 1911 (Source: Evening Journal, Sept. 28, 1911)

During the Jim Crow era, discriminatory practices and segregation extended to all aspects of life, including medicine. Black Americans were denied access or received substandard care, leading to health disparities.

Through my research project, I have delved deeply into the struggles endured by African Americans in fighting against this inequality. Utilizing interviews, archival research, hospital records, and nursing school files, I have unearthed a wealth of information that sheds light on the civil rights movement within the medical field.

Here is the program description:

Fighting Jim Crow Discrimination and Segregation in Health Care examines the experiences of African Americans before the passage of modern Civil Rights legislation in the mid-1960s. By highlighting this little-known history within the context of Delmarva and the broader region, I aim to shed light on the contributions of African American doctors, nurses, and caregivers and the advances made within the Black hospital system. This program will explore activists’ struggles in their fight against racism and their relentless pursuit of equality in medicine and health.

african american nurses struggled for civil rights
African American Nurses at Camp Sherman, Ohio, around 1918 (Source: National Women’s History Museum)

This program aims to help participants understand and discuss this unique civil rights narrative, the lesser-known story about the historic struggle for health equality in the United States and the region, and how this legacy affected African Americans.  Here are some of the objectives:

  • Recognize the contributions of unheralded African American trailblazers in the medical professions and allied occupations.
  • Understand how Black activists, NAACP lawyers, professional organizations, and everyday citizens worked to eliminate discrimination and create equal access.
  • Describe how litigation and federal law ended the “separate but equal” legal doctrine for hospitals.
  • Discuss the history and legacy of African American healthcare and consider what we can learn from the struggle to achieve equality.

Prohibition Talk Focuses on New Hampshire

I recently had the opportunity to examine the subject of temperance and prohibition from a New England perspective. While framing this within a national context for the Nashua Public Library, the lecture considered the centuries-long attempt to control and regulate the consumption of alcohol in a regional context. This took in stories of rumrunners landing Canadian whiskey on isolated beaches, moonshiners, bathtub gin, intriguing personalities, complicated New England politics, organized crime, outgunned lawmen, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. There is a growing interest in this period, and I was pleased to do the prohibition talk while discussing these matters from the New England perspective.

prohibition talk amendment
House Adopts Prohibition Amendment, New York Tribue, June 18, 1917

C&D Canal Talk

Harford Community College is offering a talk and continuing education course on the C&D Canal. Starting on May 5, 2022, at 1:30 p.m., it involves three sessions. The first is a classroom lecture and that is followed by two field trips to towns along the C&D Canal The course is presented by Mike Dixon.

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal has fascinating stories to be told. Along the 14 miles of the nearly 200-year-old waterway, every town and village, every lock and bridge, and every camp spot used by Union soldiers during the Civil War contributed to the engaging narrative. Discover the role that mule-drawn barges, locks, steamboats, and changing methods of transportation played in the evolving history of the Canal and the region.

For additional information and registration click this link https://hccweb1.harford.edu/scheduleofc…/U_noncrweb.asp…

C&D Canal Talk
A talk and course on the C&D Canal.

Life in the Past Lane at Rodgers Tavern & Perryville

Topic:

Life in the Past Lane at Rodgers Tavern (2022 Rodgers Tavern Museum Virtual Spring Lecture)

Description:

“Life in the Past Lane” examines the role of Perryville and the Tavern as an important transportation hub, from the colonial era to the 20th Century. Join us in this engaging program as we journey into the past lane, examining the unique stories and characters of the Lower Susquehanna River, the local ferries, the old colonial road that still carries traffic past the Tavern, and the bridges. This presentation includes many seldom-seen photos, which will help us consider the role the tavern played in the development of the broader community. So be sure to join us as we consider important history in your neighborhood.

FREE LECTURE
ONLINE ONLY
Advanced Registration RequiredTime

Apr 23, 2022, 06:30 PM

Click here for registration

Rodgers Tavern in Perryville
Rodgers Tavern in Perryville on June 30, 2018