Description: For enslaved and newly freed African Americans, attaining freedom and citizenship without health for themselves and their families would have been an empty victory. Even before emancipation, African Americans recognized that control of their bodies was a critical battleground in their struggle for autonomy, and they devised strategies to retain at least some of that control. In Doctoring Freedom, Gretchen Long tells the stories of African Americans who fought for access to both medical care and medical education, showing the important relationship between medical practice and political identity.
Review Quotes: "Rich and original. Long addresses an important chronological void in the history of African American health and healing while illuminating the extended arc of African American struggles to achieve dignity, autonomy, and citizenship through medical care."--Sharla M. Fett, Occidental College