Reveals the history of the individuals who worked to make psychiatry
more available to Harlem's black community in the early Civil Rights
Era.
Toward the middle of the twentieth century, African Americans in New
York City began to receive increased access to mental health care in
some facilities within the city's mental health system. This study
documents how and why this important change in public health-and in
public opinion on race-occurred. Drawing on records from New York's
children's courts, Harlem's public schools, Columbia University, and the
Department of Hospitals, Dennis Doyle tells here the story of the
American psychiatrists and civil servants who helped codify in New
York's mental health policies the view that blacks and whites are
psychological equals. The book examines in particular the events through
which these racial liberals working in Harlem gained a foothold within
New York's public institutions, creating inclusive public policies and
ostensibly race-neutral standards of care. Psychiatry and Racial
Liberalism in Harlem, 1936-1968 not only contributes to the growing body
of historiography on race and medical institutions in the civil rights
era but, more importantly, shows how inveterate racial prejudices within
public policy can be overcome.
Dennis A. Doyle is assistant professor of history at the Saint Louis
College of Pharmacy.