Title | Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination |
Publication Type | Book |
Year of Publication | 2011 |
Author | Nelson, Alondra |
Number of Pages | 289 |
Publisher | University of Minnesota Press |
City | Minneapolis, MN |
Publication Language | English |
ISBN or ASIN Number | 0816676488 |
Keywords | Black, Black Panther Party, health care, Race |
Copies at the Archive | 9 |
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism--its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination--was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.