Body and Soul
The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination
The legacy of the Black Panther Party’s commitment to community health care, a central aspect of its fight for social justice
Alondra Nelson recovers a lesser-known aspect of The Black Panther Party’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was practical and ideological and that their understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race.
In Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson combines careful research, deep political insight, and passionate commitment to tell the little-known story of the Black Panther Party's health activism in the late 1960s. In doing so, and in showing how the problems of poverty, discrimination, and access to medical care remain hauntingly similar more than forty years later, Nelson reminds us that the struggle continues, particularly for African Americans, and that social policies have profound moral implications.
Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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.
Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.
The Black Panther Party’s understanding of health as a basic human right and its engagement with the social implications of genetics anticipated current debates about the politics of health and race. That legacy—and that struggle—continues today in the commitment of health activists and the fight for universal health care.
In Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson combines careful research, deep political insight, and passionate commitment to tell the little-known story of the Black Panther Party's health activism in the late 1960s. In doing so, and in showing how the problems of poverty, discrimination, and access to medical care remain hauntingly similar more than forty years later, Nelson reminds us that the struggle continues, particularly for African Americans, and that social policies have profound moral implications.
Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
This book is a revelation. Alondra Nelson uncovers two remarkable histories in Body and Soul. First, she provides the deep context for our current conversation about the health disparities that plague the African-American community and that are, as she puts it, ‘quite literally sickening.’ Second, she adds immeasurably to our knowledge of the Black Panther Party, complicating its commonplace designation as a radical, militant organization to unearth its dedication and hard work in advocating for and providing equal and quality health care for even the most underserved African Americans. Nelson is the first scholar I know of to bring these two histories into dialogue with each other, and she does so with spectacular results. This is a tremendously important book.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University
The activities of the Black Panther Party have long been reduced to stories of violent police confrontations and empty propaganda. By taking seriously the claims and the practices of the Black Panthers with respect to the health of Black people, Alondra Nelson has provided a critical corrective to earlier studies. More importantly, this is a brilliant analysis of a significant moment in the long tradition of health advocacy on the part of African Americans. Body and Soul is a major achievement.
Evelynn Hammonds, Harvard University
In her revisionist account, Nelson insightfully guides the reader through the range of campaigns by which the Black Panther Party paved the way to broad efforts to promote biomedical inclusion and democratize access to medical knowledge and practice.
Steven Epstein, author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research
By focusing on the health-related activities of the Black Panthers, Nelson makes a valuable contribution to the literature.
Library Journal
Alondra Nelson provides a smart and timely evocation of the Black Panther Party’s forgotten community health care initiatives.
Blood Beats
Body and Soul presents an analysis that is rare and badly needed in US colleges and universities today.
New Orleans Independent Media Center
Body and Soul is well researched and powerfully argued, and it skillfully bridges several scholarly fields.
The Crisis
An excellent companion text. Nelson’s work extends that lens to the present day and
demonstrates how that struggle continues, and does so without resorting to tropes of Black pathology.
Racism Review
Contents
Preface: Politics by Other Means
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Serving the People Body and Soul
1. African American Responses to Medical Discrimination before 1966
2. Origins of Black Panther Party Health Activism
3. The People’s Free Medical Clinics
4. Spin Doctors: The Politics of Sickle Cell Anemia
5. As American as Cherry Pie: Contesting the Biologization of Violence
Conclusion: Race and Health in the Post Civil Rights Era
Notes
Index
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