Simon/Phd Dissertation
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! ! ! ! The Creation of the King/Drew Medical Complex and the Politics of Public Memory ! ! A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF ! THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF ! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ! AMERICAN STUDIES ! December 2014 ! ! ! By ! Daniel Gene Simon ! ! Dissertation Committee: Robert Perkinson, Chairperson William Chapman Lois Horton Margot Henriksen ! David Stannard ! ! ! ! Keywords: Civil Rights, Medical History, Los Angeles, Public Memory ! ! ! !Abstract In the aftermath of the1965 Watts Uprising, Martin Luther King Jr., General Hospital and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Willowbrook, California were created to address the medical concerns of the impoverished black community of South Los Angeles. This dissertation describes the creation process of the medical complex which was defined by empowerment, engagement, and ideological contest. It utilizes the memories of participants to tell the larger story of the hospital’s creation multi-dimensionally, while simultaneously conveying the personal understandings of identity affected by the process. In studying the individuals and the endeavor, this dissertation speaks to the structural aspects of racism, power, and politics in 1960s America and beyond. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! "2 !Table of Contents !Chapter One: King/Drew in History…..………….……………………………………4 !Chapter Two: The Charles R. Drew Medical Society and Dr. Sol White Jr..….…53 !Chapter Three: The Hahn Legacy and the Creation of King/Drew………..…..…83 !Chapter Four: Executive Memory………………………………………………..…142 !Chapter Five: Black Empowerment and Political Inclusion in Los Angeles……212 !Chapter Six: Community Memory of the Creation of King/Drew……..…………264 !Epilogue……………………………………………………………………….…..…..329 !Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..337 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! "3 Chapter One: King/Drew in History ! “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and 1 !inhumane.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1966 ! “If America is to survive, this history must not be repeated. No one can be proud of the infamous dealings with human illness and misery in our history. Racism in medicine, rooted in slavery, continued by tradition and always illogical, casts an ominous shadow on our future. No one can justify the bigotry, the ignorance, the hate and the waste of human lives in this “land of the free, and home of the brave.” 2 ! —John LS Hollomon, Jr., President of the National Medical Association, 1966 Introduction Despite its infamous public perception as the “Killer King,” this dissertation argues that the creation of Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital and the Charles R. Drew School of Medicine and Science (King/Drew) located in Willowbrook, California, was a victory in the struggle for civil rights equality in Los Angeles in the 1960s.3 Built as a political response to the 1965 Watts Riots, King/Drew was created by a movement that aimed to challenge the chronic medical effects of de facto segregation and ghettoization of the majority black and poor population of South Central Los Angeles. 1 Dan Munro, “America’s Forgotten Civil Right - Healthcare,” Forbes Online Edition, August 28, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2013/08/28/americas-forgotten-civil-right-healthcare/ The quote originates from a speech King made before the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1966. 2 Herbert Montfort Morias. The History of the Negro in Medicine (New York: Publishers Company, under the auspices of The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1968), XIV. 3 Throughout this dissertation, the names of institutions are shortened or abbreviated. Both the hospital and the medical school have undergone name changes over the years. In this era, the Charles R. Drew School of Medicine and Science was called the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School, or the Drew School. It appears abbreviated as CRDPMS. Similarly, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center was called the Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital; initially, it was called the Los Angeles County Southeast General Hospital, but it was renamed in King’s honor soon after he was assassinated. It is referred to simply as King Hospital. The medical complex is referred to as King/Drew, as the two institutions were symbiotically joined during this time period; after opening, the campus was repeatedly augmented with facilities designed to cater to the specific needs of the community, for example, a school for handicapped children.The Charles R. Drew Medical Society appears abbreviated as CRDMS. The Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California is referred to as USC Medical School; The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA is referred to as UCLA Medical School. "4 King/Drew was also envisioned as a point of access from which the community would gain the tools to transform itself with education, employment and training. Answering the call for “maximum feasible participation,” King/Drew’s creation process was an inclusive cultural negotiation between community insiders and outside forces of reform, a dynamic community action complicated by competing agendas and evolving ideological approaches. In exploring the process, this dissertation argues that King/Drew’s creation was a localized contest for self-sufficiency reflective of a long-running national struggle for enfranchisement and racial equality in medicine intrinsically connected with the civil rights movement that began amid Reconstruction and found partial fruition in the 1960s. This story is a nexus of race, power and politics. ! Historical Summary Beginning in the early 1950s, community activists and local physicians in South Los Angeles began pursuing the construction of a private community hospital where members of the isolated and ghettoized black community would be treated by black physicians, a westward expansion of the black hospital movement. In the early 1960s, Dr. Sol White, Jr. continued in this regard as a representative of the Charles R. Drew Medical Society, the Los Angeles affiliate of the National Medical Association.4 In 1964, Dr. White attempted to create a private black hospital; his failed efforts paved the way for the later success of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. The Los Angeles Riots of August 1965 generated immense attention for the previously ignored inequality of the black 4 Hill, Julius W. "The Golden State Medical Association: The California Chapter of the National Medical Association." California Medicine 111, no. 1 (1969): 46. Founded in 1895, the NMA fought for racial equality in medicine against segregated organizations like the American Medical Association; while integrated today, the AMA barred most black physicians from being members in the 1960s. "5 urban landscape. With favorable winds at his back, Hahn and his newly empowered constituency harnessed the requisite political capital for action. But via the transformative powers of politics and compromise, the ideal of a private black hospital morphed into a Los Angeles County hospital symbiotically linked with a medical school in the tradition of Howard University School of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Construction began in earnest in 1966 and King/Drew opened its doors on March 27, 1972. While largely absent from the public consciousness, the creation of King/Drew was as fiercely contentious and meaningful as other more well-known battles of the civil rights era. ! Theoretical Underpinnings As the pages that follow will attest, the creation of King/Drew via political compromise led to a largely unresolvable paradox of perception. Voices of integration and separation vied for supremacy amid an evolving discourse of individual and community empowerment and independence. Issues of authority and autonomy marked the project as something far more important than the construction of a medical center, as it might have been in other circumstances where race was not a factor. Conflicting perspectives on the medical center’s core identity and utility can be readily, if reductively, understood here through a limited recitation of questions asked and answered at length throughout the interviews that follow. Why was the hospital built and who/what was it built for? How would the community control what many believed was their new “community” hospital? Who would be in charge, and did they understand the needs and desires of the community, and was this understanding contingent upon color "6 and local knowledge? As a Los Angeles County institution—in which racial preference in institution organization was prohibited—was King/Drew specifically a black or multi- cultural institution? Beneath these questions are more implicit structural questions stemming from differing perceptions of the history of racism in medicine, and more broadly, racism in America that affect both black physicians and black patients. After centuries of inequality, why would/should the black community trust white outsiders despite their supposedly good intentions? Amid black empowerment, why should the black community of South Los Angeles not control its destiny? After years of white hegemony, would white authority limit the degree of black agency or would the Age of Aquarius bring white and black together to the bargaining table as equal partners? With such immense