Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution

Narrated by Danny Glover, this compelling documentary by legendary filmmaker Charles Burnett looks at the challenges faced by African Americans trying to gain access to quality healthcare during the Jim Crow era. Segregation extended deep into medical care, with hospitals in both the South and the North routinely refusing to provide care to African American patients. Hospitals designed solely for black patients were mostly underfunded and acutely inferior to facilities with a whites-only policy. And few medical schools were willing to admit non-white students, while the American Medical Association refused to open its membership to African American doctors, who founded their own professional group with the National Medical Association. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the creation of Medicare in 1965 sought to bring about an end to segregation in healthcare, but many hospitals pushed back at federal attempts to deny or limit treatment on the basis of race. The film offers rarely-seen archival footage and photos that detail the struggle to bring long-overdue change, along the way detailing the achievements of inspiring figures who may not be familiar to many today, most notably Dr. W. Montague Cobb, who was tireless in his efforts to break down the professional barriers that prevented African Americans from succeeding in the medical field. While most documentaries on the Civil Rights movement focus on the political and educational aspects of segregation, this one addresses a much less remarked—if no less shameful—chapter in American race-relations history. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)