Herman J. Geiger (November 11, 1925 – December 28, 2020), known as H. Jack Geiger, was an American
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
and
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
activist
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
. He was a leader in the field of
social medicine, the philosophy that doctors had a responsibility to treat the social as well as medical conditions that adversely affected patients' health, famously (and controversially) writing prescriptions for food for impoverished patients with malnutrition. Geiger came to embody the idea of the responsibility of a physician to do something about what is now known as the social determinants of health, believing that medicine could be an instrument of social change. He served patients' medical needs as well as social and economic necessities, which he believed were in large part responsible for the health problems communities faced.
[Dittmer, J. (2013, March 16). Civil Rights History Project: H. Jack Geiger. Library of Congress. other.] He was one of the doctors to bring the
community health center model to the United States, starting a network that serves 28 million low-income patients as of 2020.
The Arthur C. Logan Professor of Community Medicine at the
City University of New York School of Medicine
The CUNY School of Medicine is a medical school that began operations in fall 2016 as part of the City University of New York. The school is in Hamilton Heights on the campus of the City College of New York and partners with Saint Barnabas Hea ...
, Geiger was a cofounder and president of
Physicians for Human Rights as well as a cofounder and president of
Physicians for Social Responsibility, each of which won
Nobel Peace Prizes.
Early life, family and education
Herman J. Geiger, called Jack, was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, on November 11, 1925.
His parents, a doctor (Jacob) and a microbiologist (Virginia Lowenstein), were both Jewish immigrants, from Austria and Germany respectively.
They raised "Jackie" and his sister on Manhattan's
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West ...
, with relatives fleeing the
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
often staying in the Geiger home on arrival to the United States.
Geiger rapidly skipped grades in public school and, as a result, graduated from
Townsend Harris High School
Townsend Harris High School at Queens College (THHS) is a public magnet high school for the humanities in the borough of Queens in New York City. Students and alumni often refer to themselves as "Harrisites." Townsend Harris consistently ranks a ...
at 14.
Not yet old enough to enroll in college, he landed a job as a
copy boy
A copy boy is a typically young and junior worker on a newspaper. The job involves taking typed stories from one section of a newspaper to another. According to Bruce Guthrie, the former editor-in-chief of the ''Herald Sun'' who began work there ...
at ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. A
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
fan, he often went out at night to
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...
's jazz clubs (to his parents' displeasure).
He ran away from home at age 14 (in 1940) to the
Sugar Hill, Harlem home of
Canada Lee
Canada Lee (born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata; March 3, 1907 – May 9, 1952) was an American professional boxer and then an actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. After careers as a jockey, boxer and musician, he became an actor ...
, as Geiger later recounted on ''
This American Life
''This American Life'' (''TAL'') is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internation ...
''.
He had met the
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
actor backstage at a Broadway production of ''
Native Son
''Native Son'' (1940) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.
While not apologizing ...
''.
Lee agreed to take Geiger in and Geiger stayed for over a year (with the consent of Geiger's parents).
Lee took on the role of surrogate father.
During his time with Lee, Geiger was introduced to people like
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...
,
Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take ...
,
Richard Wright,
Adam Clayton Powell,
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
,
Paul Robeson, and
William Saroyan
William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''The ...
.
Geiger heard African American visitors to Lee's home recount their experiences of racism; the treatment of African American troops in the US South at this time particularly made an impression on Geiger.
With the help of a loan from Lee, Geiger enrolled at the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
in 1941.
At night he worked at ''
The Madison Capitol Times'' newspaper, though still under 18, Geiger had to acquire a special exemption from Madison's curfew for minors.
In 1942, Geiger joined
A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In ...
and
Bayard Rustin who were planning a march on Washington in protest of racial discrimination in the defense factories for
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
; they succeeded in pressuring President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
to take measures against this without going through with the march.
In 1943, Geiger met
James Farmer, the founder of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which prompted Geiger to start a CORE chapter in Madison, one of the earliest chapters.
As a part of CORE, Geiger took part in a variety of efforts to push the civil rights agenda. Among them, he took a large part in efforts to integrate housing and restaurants. In an interview with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Library of Congress, Geiger recounts how he, along with his interracial team of CORE members, would go into restaurants and get asked to leave because they refused to serve black individuals. They would then proceed to begin a sit-in and go around the restaurant explaining the situation and inviting other customers to join in their effort.
In 1943, Geiger turned 18 and left school to join the war effort, enlisting with the
merchant marine because it was the only racially integrated military service at the time.
He worked on the only ship in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
with an African American captain,
Hugh Mulzac, on the ''
SS Booker T. Washington''.
He was discharged in 1947 and enrolled at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
to pursue pre-med studies, but where he also encountered significant anti-Black discrimination.
He organized a strike, with two thousand faculty and students protesting issues like the exclusion of African American patients from certain hospitals and the rejection of qualified African American applicants to the medical school.
As a part of the campus chapter of the American Veteran Association (AVC), Geiger discovered that the University of Chicago Hospital had been denying black patients. Specifically, the maternity hospital had a strict policy that no black mother could have their baby delivered there. Instead, he recognized that many university hospitals, including the University of Chicago at the time, had been finding ways to exclude black patients and redirect them towards a black-run hospital, Provident Hospital, located in the South Side of Chicago.
Geiger also discovered the discrimination in the Medical School Admissions Committee, finding that the records for the minutes of admissions meetings specifically talked about black applicants being qualified but not accepting them because they were "not ready to have a black student at this time".
After many unsuccessful attempts to bring attention to the issues, Geiger and the AVC planned a protest that took place on December 7, 1947. For his "extracurricular" activities, he was blackballed by the
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016.
The AMA's state ...
and returned to working in journalism, unable to gain entrance to medical school.
Working as a science journalist, he was active in efforts to use science in the service of human needs.
After five years in journalism, Geiger secured an assignment that allowed him to approach medical school deans.
Jack Caughey of
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine was encouraging and Geiger successfully enrolled in 1954.
While in medical school, a
Rockefeller grant Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to:
People with the name Rockefeller fa ...
allowed him to spend five months working in Pholela, South Africa, at a health clinic that also invested in other local improvements—latrines, vegetable gardens, feeding programs—and succeeded thanks significantly to local staff members engagement with the community this way.
It was during his time in medical school, when he spent time in a rural area of South Africa called Pholela, where Geiger was first introduced to the idea of social medicine. He trained under physicians Sydney and Emily Kark who had implemented the idea of community oriented primary care in the Pholela Community Health Centre (PCHC). This system entailed the concept that medicine could both attend to the physical ills of the people in those communities but also the structural problems that affected health, like poverty for example. During his time in Pholela, there was a significant decrease in many health metrics including infant mortality, malnutrition, and infectious diseases. Geiger participated in and saw the completion of pit latrines, vegetable gardens, and food programs.
It was this model of healthcare he found in PCHC which later inspired his creation of community health centers in Mississippi in the 1960s. The experience spurred an interest in working in international health.
Geiger received his M.D. from Case Western in 1958.
Medical career
Geiger next trained in internal medicine at Harvard, working at
Boston City Hospital from 1958 to 1964.
During this time, he also earned a master's degree in epidemiology from the
Harvard School of Public Health, and was a fellow at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
's Research Training Program in Social Science and Medicine.
In 1961, Geiger cofounded
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which argued that the government was understating the extent of destruction a nuclear war would cause.
Geiger conducted "the bombing run" at the group's public presentations, detailing the devastation a one-megaton nuclear bomb would inflict on the city hosting the meeting.
He coauthored one of the first papers to estimate the medical toll of nuclear war, published in ''
The New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
His ...
'' in May 1962, just months before the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
.
Taking Boston as a case study, it predicted a nuclear strike would leave millions dead and injured, vastly outstripping the hospital capacity that would remain to treat those who (initially) survived. The article argued physicians had to consider "the prevention of thermonuclear war" as a relevant part of
preventive medicine.
In 1985, PSR was awarded a
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
for its contributions to the disarmament effort.
In 1964, Geiger participated in the
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. ...
, serving as field coordinator of a group of health care workers called the Medical Committee for Human Rights,
who went to Mississippi to care for the civil rights activists in
voting rights campaign.
In 1965, he organized medical care for the participants of the
Selma to Montgomery march
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the ...
with
Martin Luther King, Jr
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
.
Working in the US South, he found many African Americans were living in conditions strikingly similar to the extreme poverty he had seen in apartheid South Africa and realized the health disparities abroad that he wanted to address also existed much closer to home.
President
Lyndon B. Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity (part of the
War on Poverty
The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national p ...
) as well as grants from
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
afforded him and two other doctors,
John Hatch and
Count Gibson
Count Dillon Gibson, Jr. (July 10, 1921 – July 23, 2002) was an American physician known for his advocacy in medical civil rights. As a young professor at the Medical College of Virginia, in 1955 he became the first person outside Tuskegee Syp ...
, the chance to set up a clinic in
Mound Bayou, Mississippi, which they modeled after the one Geiger had seen in South Africa: not only treating sick patients but also spending grant money digging wells and privies, establishing a library, and a variety of other social, educational and economic services.
Here Geiger wrote controversial prescriptions for food, paid out of the pharmacy budget, which drew the displeasure of the state's Governor.
Geiger replied:
The Mound Bayou clinic, called the Delta Health Center, and a similar center in
Columbia Point, Boston
Columbia Point, in the Dorchester, Massachusetts, Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts sits on a peninsula jutting out from the mainland of eastern Dorchester into the bay. Old Harbor Park is on the north side, adjacent to Old Harbor ...
, became a national model of care via community health centers and grew into network of clinics. As of 2020, the network encompasses more than 1,300 clinics at more than 9000 sites and serves about 28 million low-income patients.
From 1968 to 1971, Geiger was chair of the Department of Community Medicine at
Tufts University School of Medicine
The Tufts University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tufts University, a Private university, private research university in Massachusetts. It was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in downto ...
, then visiting professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1972–73.
For the following five years, he was Chair of the Department of Community Medicine at the
State University of New York at Stonybrook School of Medicine,
then in 1978, joined the faculty at the
City University of New York Medical School
The CUNY School of Medicine is a medical school that began operations in fall 2016 as part of the City University of New York. The school is in Hamilton Heights on the campus of the City College of New York and partners with Saint Barnabas Hea ...
as a professor of community medicine.
He was founding Chair of the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine (CHASM), from 1978 until he took emeritus status in 1996.
In the interim he was also promoted to Arthur C. Logan Professor of Community Medicine.
In 1986, Geiger was a cofounder (and later president) of
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which shared in the
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
in 1997 for its contributions to the effort to ban
land mines.
The group applied medical skills to the investigation of human rights abuses and offered medical and humanitarian aid to survivors of such abuses.
Geiger participated in human rights missions for PHR, the United Nations, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Kurdistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and South Africa.
He was also a cofounder and president of the Committee for Health in South Africa and a cofounder and national program coordinator of the
Medical Committee for Human Rights
The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) was a group of American health care professionals that initially organized in June 1964 to provide medical care for civil rights workers, community activists, and summer volunteers working in Mississi ...
.
Honors
In 1973, Geiger received the first Award for Excellence of the
American Public Health Association for "exceptionally meritorious achievement in improving the health of the American people" in 1973.
In 1982, he received Award of Merit in Global Public Health from the Public Health Association of New York.
In 1993, Geiger was elected to the
Institute of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...
(IOM),
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
.
In 1998, he received the IOM's highest honor, the Lienhardt Award for "outstanding contributions to minority health".
In 1998 he also received the American Public Health Association's Sedgewick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health.
He also won the 2014 Frank A. Calderone Prize, public health's highest honor, for foundational work demonstrating the interrelation of health and human rights throughout his career.
In recognition of Geiger's pathbreaking work on discrimination in health care, the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Caucuses founded the H. Jack Geiger Congressional Fellowships on Health Disparities to support young minority scholars.
Geiger received an honorary degree from Case Western in 2000
as well as an honorary doctorate of science from
State University of New York
The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...
.
Personal life
In 1951, Geiger married Mary Battle, a health care administrator; they divorced in 1968.
In 1982, he married
Nicole Schupf, a neuroscience and epidemiology professor at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
.
He died on December 28, 2020, at age 95,
at his home in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York City.
Works
*
*
*
References
External links
On Common Ground– NIH exhibit on the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou
– interview
Library of Congress oral history interviewwith
John Dittmer
John Dittmer (born 1939) is an American historian, and Professor Emeritus of DePauw University.
Life
John Dittmer is from Seymour, IN. He graduated from Shields High School in Seymour in 1957, being inducted into SHS Wall of Fame in 2006. He later ...
, 2013
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geiger, H. Jack
1925 births
2020 deaths
21st-century American physicians
Activists from New York City
American Jews
American epidemiologists
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine alumni
Harvard School of Public Health alumni
Harvard Fellows
Jewish activists
Physicians from New York City
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
United States Merchant Mariners of World War II
People from the Upper West Side
Members of the National Academy of Medicine