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Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi
An article from Memphis World reporting Hamer’s thoughts on medical care for African Americans, May 9, 1964.

An article from Memphis World reporting Hamer’s thoughts on medical care for African Americans, May 9, 1964.

Transcript:

JIM CROW MEDICAL CARE HIT

GREENVILLE, Miss.—

Mississippi's first Negro woman candidate for U. S. Congress, Mrs. Fannie. Lou Hamer of Ruleville, spoke here recently on "Medical Care and Pubic Health" in Mississippi, and Washington County in particular. Mrs. Hamer said there were only six Negro doctors in Washington County where the Negro population is 43,408 or 352 percent, a situation forcing Negroes to seek help from white doctors. (There are 35,230 whites in the county).

"At the white doctor's office we're put in a little over-crowded room and made to wait all day until the doctor treats his white patients. She told the crowd that throughout the 2nd Congressional District, where she is running for Democratic nomination, the death rate is twice as high for Negroes as for whites.

"One third of the Negro babies born in Washington County each year are delivered by midwives. Only two white babies out of 823 born last year were delivered by midwives. And people wonder why the white infant mortality rate is 26.1 percent but 67.2 percent for Negroes," she said.

Mrs. Hamer attributed this to segregated hospital facilities "which lower the quality of patient care and violate professional ethics," and "the poverty of segregation." "Poverty and poor health form an unbreakable circle, one which need attention from the people who are supposed to represent us, she said.

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Citation Information
“Memphis World: JIM CROW MEDICAL CARE HIT,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/a8d46991302e774db82d9a15db4992fd.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of Rhodes College, Crossroads to Freedom via Tennessee Digital Library.

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For this source, consider:

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Item 2 of 12 in the Primary Source Set Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi

Previous ItemNext Item
A clip of students demonstrating against the Vietnam War including a short speech by Fannie Lou Hamer, August 7, 1971.
An article from Memphis World reporting Hamer’s thoughts on medical care for African Americans, May 9, 1964.
An article from Memphis World about Hamer being refused a place on the ballot at the Democratic National Convention, October 31, 1964.
Audio clips from an interview in which Harry Belafonte reflects on Hamer’s significance and impact, January 28, 1991.
An excerpt from a FBI file record detailing the arrest of Hamer and five others for trying to use a bus terminal bathroom, June 1963.
A photograph of an African American cotton plantation worker in the Mississippi Delta in 1939.
A photograph of an African American at a plantation store in the Mississippi Delta in 1939.
A photograph of a group at the county convention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964.
An article from Memphis World describing a mock ballot among African American voters, November 14, 1964.
An article from Memphis World about the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Freedom Drive, September 5, 1964.
A photograph of African American day laborers in the Mississippi Delta in 1940.
A photograph of participants at a Freedom Summer meeting in 1964.

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