Description
New York University Press Health in the City Race Poverty and the Negotiation of Womens Health in New York City 1915-1930 2015 Edition by Tanya Hart
Shortly after the dawn of the twentieth century, the New York City Department of Health decided to address what it perceived as the racial nature of health. It delivered heavily racialized care in different neighborhoods throughout the city: syphillis treatment among African Americans, tuberculosis for Italian Americans, and so on. It was a challenging and ambitious program, dangerous for the providers, and troublingly reductive for the patients. Nevertheless, poor and working-class African American, British West Indian, and Southern Italian women all received some of the nation's best health care during this period.Health in the City challenges traditional ideas of early twentieth-century urban black health care by showing a program that was simultaneously racialized and cutting-edge. It reveals that even the most well-meaning public health programs may inadvertently reinforce perceptions of inferiority that they were created to fix. Table of contents :- Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Migration and the City 15 2. Professionalization in the City 64 3. Work in the City 85 4. Culture in the City 108 5. Birthing in the City: Columbus Hill 138 6. Health in Columbus Hill 162 7. Birthing in the City: The Mulberry District 188 8. Health in the Mulberry District 218 Notes 245 Bibliography 291 Index 315 About the Author 329