Medical Committee for Human Rights
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The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) was a group of American
health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
professionals that initially organized in June 1964 to provide medical care for civil rights workers, community activists, and summer volunteers working in
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
during 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. ...
" project. Tightly associated with the
Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
,
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 ...
notably addressed the 1966 MCHR convention. The organization remained active for years afterward in terms of fighting for disadvantaged Americans to have expanded access to health services, becoming a part of the "
new left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
".


Activities and history

Over a hundred health care professionals, doctors joined with nurses, psychologists, and social workers, spent a week or more participating 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. ...
" project. Though accustomed to at least some deference due to their profession and cause, they found themselves facing opposition from the same waves of
bigotry Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
that the civil rights workers themselves dealt with. Major governmental and non-governmental organizations did not approve of many of their methods. For example, 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 ...
advocated an official policy up until the late 1960s in which it allowed affiliate state groups to be racially segregated, African-American physicians being denied hospital privileges and other things. On the other hand, many notable public figures advocated on the side of the MCHR; one of them,
Paul Dudley White Paul Dudley White (June 6, 1886 – October 31, 1973), was an American physician and cardiologist. He was considered one of the leading cardiologists of his day, and a prominent advocate of preventive medicine. Early life and education White wa ...
, had been
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
’s personal physician. The founder was Walter Lear. Aaron O. Wells was the organization's first national chairman.
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 ...
notably addressed the annual MCHR convention in 1966. He proclaimed, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."


Decline

In the wake of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, most ''de jure'' limitations on access to medicine had fallen, leaving MCHR in a period of flux leading to its declining effectiveness during the 1970s and 1980s. The MCHR's ultimate failure to push the U.S. government to adopt either a
single-payer health care Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from p ...
system or some other form of funding that subsidizes care for all Americans, regardless of the ability to pay, demoralized members. The group did not survive the
Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over D ...
.


Legacy

The MCHR ended up functioning as a model for organizations that succeeded it, such as
Physicians for Human Rights Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a US-based not-for-profit human rights NGO that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world. PHR headquarters are in New Y ...
and
Physicians for a National Health Program Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is an advocacy organization of more than 20,000 American physicians, medical students, and health professionals that supports a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance program. ...
, while sharing both the MCHR's specific foundational goal (of improving healthcare access for individuals suffering from bigotry and prejudice) and larger goal (of advancing the general healthcare system to provide integrated services for all).


See also

*
Criticism of 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 stat ...
*
Ann Hirschman Ann Hirschman is an American nurse practitioner and an elder of the street medic movement. Early life and career Ann Hirschman was trained as a nurse, graduating in 1967. She became a member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, where ...


References


Further reading

* Dittmer, John (2009). '' The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care''. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. {{ISBN, 978-1-59691-567-1.


External links


Medical Committee for Human Rights records
at th
University of Pennsylvania Libraries
1964 in Mississippi Civil rights movement Anti-racist organizations in the United States History of Mississippi Medical and health foundations in the United States Organizations established in 1964