Request for Freedom Movement Veterans

We've received a research request from Richard Rothstein, author of the game-changing "The Color of Law" that exposed the local, state, and federal laws and policies that supported racial housing segregation in urban America (https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/). 

He asks:


	I am assisting Leila Morsy, a brilliant young scholar who is writing a book about the history of racial segregation in medicine and health care. I’ve been reading her manuscript as it develops, and believe it will have an enormous impact not only in the medical profession but in our understanding of racial health disparities today.  In brief, she can show that the poorer health outcomes of African Americans relative to whites is not merely, as conventionally assumed, the result of differences in economic and social conditions, but is the ongoing impact of a viciously segregated medical system that was more intense and longer-lasting than most of us realize.

	She is seeking help from civil rights veterans and that is why I am writing to you now. I wonder if you could circulate her request to our CRM list. Here is the specific request:

	In May 1966, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner temporarily reassigned 750 employees to the Office of Equal Health Opportunity from other departments in HEW. Throughout May and June, these employees were tasked with inspecting hospitals throughout the South to check that they complied with Medicare's non-discrimination requirement. Medicare came into effect on July 1, 1966, and any hospital that inspectors found to be non-compliant would be barred from participating in the federal program until it made the necessary changes. 

	To meet compliance on paper, hospitals often engaged in subterfuges, and attempted to hide that they were in fact racially segregated. This was not difficult to do; hospitals could, for example, desegregate one ward only on the day inspectors arrived and escort the inspectors only to that ward. Inspectors met with patients, staff, and members of civil rights groups who acted as local informants. Leila is interested in speaking with people who inspected hospitals, acted as local informants, or were otherwise involved in the federal intervention that forced Southern hospitals to integrate.

	If any civil rights movement veterans acted as local informants, or were otherwise involved in or even marginally aware of this program, would you please contact Leila Morsy at lem357@mail.harvard.edu? Or, if they are old friends and acquaintances of mine, they can contact me and I will pass their information on to Leila.

[NOTE: Please reply directly to Leila Morsy or Richard Rothstein, not me. :)]