44th Minority Health Conference Events

“She went to the Negro doctor”: Black physicians, surveillance and abortion in the Jim Crow South

In the days before Roe v. Wade, women often crossed many lines to get abortions. They traveled across states and sometimes state lines, and they often traveled across racial boundaries. Pregnant and trying not to be, many white abortion seekers sought out Black abortion providers — some medical professionals and others not — in hopes that those workers were more likely to provide the service and to increase the likelihood of privacy by going to another community. The reality, however, was often quite different — and particularly for Black abortion workers who became dangerously visible when they accepted white clients. In this talk, Dr. Greenlee sheds light on the costs of the illegal era, by discussing the cases of two 20th-century Black physicians caught in legal crosshairs. Each wound up in North and South Carolina courts precisely because they were suspected of terminating white pregnancies. And each was uniquely vulnerable to prosecution in Jim Crow’s racial state, as one of a few Black doctors operating in their respective spaces and, in one case, due to civil rights activism in the 1950s.

White Health as Global Health

European imperial expansion meant that public health concerns became globalized and required cooperation with other imperial powers for the treatment and prevention of diseases. This lecture will trace the role of race and racism in the development of global public health law. It explores the connections, legacies, vestiges, and important disjunctions between tropical medicine and global public health. This reflection considers the primacy given to White health as one of the animating purposes behind the emergence of the global public health regime. The centrality of protecting the health of White people and interests then and now continues to inform the global health agenda. 

These remarks will surface the role of international law through omission and commission in structuring and reifying racialized hierarchies of care and concern. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opening to not only recognize, but to potentially reshape the relationship between race and global health. This talk will discuss recent efforts at reform and assess whether they provide a path to address past and continuing effects of racism in global public health. It concludes with the hope that bourgeoning efforts to decolonize global public health and to address racial inequities will not be ephemeral. 

About the Minority Health Conference

The Minority Health Conference is the largest and longest-running student-led health conference in the country. The conference aims to raise awareness around health disparities and mobilize students, academics, and community members to take action for change. Started in 1977 by the Minority Student Caucus, the conference is nationally recognized and respected, attracting more than 500 attendees each year and hundreds more who view it via webcast.