THE NEGRO HOSPITAL RENAISSANCE: THE BLACK HOSPITAL MOVEMENT, 1920--1940

This thesis is a study of the black hospital movement that took place between 1920-1940. In the 1920s, the conditions for black physicians were not auspicious. At a time when the hospital had become crucial to medical practice and medical education, the growing importance of hospital standardization and accreditation threatened to eliminate the black hospital and with it, the black physicians\u27 professional existence. In response, a group of elite black physicians launched a movement to improve black hospitals. They hoped to bring about a Negro Hospital Renaissance. The necessity of separate facilities for black people was at the heart of the black hospital movement\u27s ideology. The physicians associated with the movement claimed that their programs represented a practical response to the racial realities of American life in the 1920s and 1930s and that black physicians needed black hospitals in order to survive. However, this accommodationist philosophy came under fire from integrationists who pushed for integration of hospital facilities and argued that the place for black physicians was not in Jim Crow institutions. Tensions between the accommodationists and integrationists developed in the hospital field during the 1920s and 1930s. These conflicts are illustrated in case studies of several black hospitals, including Chicago\u27s Provident Hospital. This thesis examines, in detail, the role of two important black medical organizations, the National Hospital Association and the National Medical Association, in black hospital reform. The activities of three white philanthropies, the General Education Board, the Duke Endowment, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, in promoting black medical concerns are also analyzed. Hopes for a Negro Hospital Renaissance were not realized. Some improvements were achieved at a few hospitals that had external sources of support. The majority of black hospitals remained substandard. Factors that limited the scope of the reform movement included the Depression, the ineffectiveness of the black medical organizations, inadequate support from major health care organizations, and rise of integrationism. Despite these limitations, the black hospital movement has had a lasting legacy: it forestalled the feared extinction of the black hospital and enabled the black medical profession to survive at a time when its existence was surely endangered