Historians tend to focus on mob violence and lynching when they
write about the racial atrocities of the Jim Crow South. But not
all killings were carried out by men in white sheets armed with
guns and nooses. Indeed, it’s obvious when you think about it
that many more African-Americans died as a result of racist
medical treatment in the South than at the hands of all the
lynch mobs, bombers, and night riders combined. The American
Medical Association glossed over this issue last month when it
issued a formal apology for the racist policies it tolerated —
and tacitly endorsed — in the century-long period that ended in
the late 1960’s. In failing to tell the bloody side of the
story, the AMA diminished the power of what was perhaps the most
important public statement of its history. In the segregated
South, black Americans who experienced medical emergencies faced
the ever-present danger that they would die after being given
substandard treatment — or no treatment at all — at segregated
hospitals. One of the m