Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination
Alondra Nelson
Apr 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Machelle Williams
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8 hr 26 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. 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 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.
About the author
Alondra Nelson is a professor of sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome and coeditor of Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life and Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision between DNA, Race, and History.
Machelle Williams has crafted an easy storytelling style from twenty-three years as a corporate trainer and keynote diversity speaker. Machelle's voice is nuanced, ranging from soft and soothing to dramatic and smoky. Since 2016 she has successfully produced over twenty-eight audiobook projects.
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