U-M Project Documents History of Health Care in Michigan’s Black Community

Photographs, old letters, certificates, medical artifacts and testimonials collected by University of Michigan researchers reveal the rich history of medical care in southeast Michigan’s black community between 1940 and 1969.

Collected through the U-M’s Kellogg African-American Health Care Project and gathered from physicians, nurses and others who worked in and were treated at black proprietary hospitals and small doctors’ offices, the information has been placed in public locations around the region, including the Bentley Historical Library and the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at U-M, the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and the Detroit Public Library.

"We’ve been able to document a very important era in health care in southeast Michigan and I think we were surprised by some of the findings," says Norman L. Foster, M.D., associate professor of neurology and senior research scientist at the Institute of Gerontology.

Research revealed that Detroit was among the cities with the highest number of black hospitals, most of which were black proprietary hospitals owned and operated by African-Americans. "There was a tremendous investment that individuals made in trying to deliver the best health care to their own people who were being denied access to care by others," says Foster, who, with Harold W. Neighbors, Ph.D., associate professor in the U-M School of Public Health, led the research team.

The Medical School maintains the project’s Web site where visitors are given a preview of the information available at the public repositories. Foster hopes the collection influences two audiences in particular. "I hope that we can encourage students who are considering careers in the health sciences to explore the information," he says. "It’s a record of achievement in African-American history that can encourage people of all types to overcome their personal barriers to succeed in the health sciences." He also hopes the information will influence those who are trying to develop new health systems so that they may be more sensitive to the issues and attitudes of all patients.

— Valerie Gliem

For more information, visit the Kellogg Project.