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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Chapter 15. The Negro in the Public Economy 345
Negroes in Southern hospitals, there is enough scattered information to
establish the fact that discrimination exists.*
Since the inauguration of the New Deal, appreciable progress had been
made, part of which consisted of the building of hospitals under the
P.W.A.^® The federal government, like most of the philanthropic founda-
tions, usually sees to it that Negroes get their share of the new hospital
facilities. Standards have been raised—^but, so far, only in a few areas. One
Southern city may have a large, completely modern hospital where a great
number of indigent people may get treatment free or for low fees. In the
next city the main hospital for low income people may be dilapidated and
so small that it cannot possibly accommodate more than an insignificant frac-
tion of those in need of hospitalization. Rural hospital facilities are totally
inadequate almost everywhere in the South, especially for Negroes.
In this field, as In public education, it seems that no uniformly satis-
factory standard can ever be achieved except through a program of perma-
nent federal aid and control. The President’s Interdepartmental Commit-
tee to Coordinate Health and Welfare Activities published in 1938 a
national health program which included a plan for continued federal
assistance to public hospitals. On the basis of this program the so-called
National Health Bill was introduced in Congress in 1939, and the Hospital
Construction Bill in 1940.^® Although these proposals have not yet been
acted upon, they have helped to focus public attention on the problem, and
they seem to indicate the general line of future action.
There seems to be less discrimination against Negroes—and in many
* Substantiation of this point may be found in Chapter 7, Section 5. Concerning public
hospitals alone, the following evidence may be added:
Only 40 of the 450 beds in the State Sanatorium in Mississippi were available to Negroes j
almost half of all the beds for the tuberculosis patients were idle because of insufficient
funds. (Harold F. Dorn, “The Health of the Negro,” unpublished manuscript prepared for
this study [first draft, 1940], p. 113. Data based on Council on Medical Education and
Hospitals, “Hospitals and Medical Care in Mississippi,” Journal of the American Medical
Association [1939], pp. 2317-2332,)
Sterner visited two of the five state charity hospitals in Mississippi in January, 1940.
Both were in bad repair with leaking roofs. Water was dropping down on the floor
in one place. In these hospitals half the beds were for Negroes. The doctor in charge of
one of the hospitals complained of the inadequate appropriations j
about one-sixth of the
beds were not in use because of shortage of funds. The reason, he explained, was that
money was apportioned by a state board composed of county physicians, who retained as
much as possible of state aid for their privately-run county hospitals. He explained,
further, that the hospital was unable to receive any normal delivery cases j only emergency
cases could be taken care of. Others have to be treated in their homes by midwives. Patients
who have any means are asked to make voluntary payments. Others are treated free.
An entirely different impression was given by a new State Charity Hospital in New Orleans,
which was visited in January, 1940. As far as the layman could ascertain, it was quite ade-
quate. It had been built as a P.W.A. project. Half the beds were for Negroes. None of
the physicians or surgeons was Negro, however, and there were only a few Negro nurses.

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