Black Americans Systematically Denied Care at White Hospitals Across the South

Jim Crow segregation extended completely to medical care. Black patients were refused treatment at white hospitals, or if admitted, were placed in segregated basement wards with inadequate equipment and care. Black doctors could not admit patients to white hospitals, could not attend medical schools in the South (only Meharry Medical College in Nashville and Howard University Medical School in Washington DC trained Black doctors), and were excluded from the American Medical Association. This created a documented pattern of preventable deaths from denial of emergency care.