The Iago Galdston Lecture: Who Needs a Doctor?: The Challenge of National Negro Health Week to the Medical Establishment

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many whites believed that African Americans were inherently ill and doomed to extinction. To challenge this stereotype and demonstrate the race’s health, Booker T. Washington launched a public health campaign in 1915: National Negro Health Week. In this talk, Paul Braff, PhD candidate in American History at Temple University, will examine the changes in, and challenges to, medical authority and public health in African American communities that the Week caused. The goal is to show how African American definitions of health differed from those of the medical establishment and the implications such differences created for the social control over, and empowerment of, African Americans.

Click here to register for this event. The cost is $12 for the general public and $8 for Friends, Fellows, Members, and Seniors. Students are FREE.