American Experience

NARRATOR:

On March 9, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights marchers to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Marching behind Dr. King were a medical doctor and a nurse, carrying first-aid gear. The two were members of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, on hand to be a "medical presence" and to treat marchers in the event of violence.

JOHN DITTMER:

The Medical Committee for Human Rights started up at the beginning of Freedom Summer in June of 1964. In Mississippi,

there were probably around 100 altogether

doctors, nurses, and social workers. They came usually for periods of a week each. Most of the doctors were white but a few of them who came down were black.

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

MCHR volunteers would stay with local black families or in motel rooms. Although they were not officially licensed, they could legally administer emergency medical care. MCHR staffed five medical centers with volunteers.

DR. ROBERT SMITH:

there were probably around 100 altogether

The Medical Committee for Human Rights really became the medical arm of the civil rights movement, whose mandates, number one, was to take care of civil rights workers and local community people who could not receive appropriate medical care; to challenge segregated waiting rooms and doctor's offices; to try to provide support to local cooperative physicians, be they black or white.

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

MCHR staff were stunned by the condition of medical care in Mississippi. Segregated care looked horrible. It was so obvious and blatant. The rooms for black patients were dilapidated, the beds were old, the equipment was old. You immediately felt you traded your dignity for care.

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

Hospitals in the South often denied medical care outright or forced black residents to pay up front.

POUSSAINT:

there were probably around 100 altogether

We had no way to transport people on a March. The local government would not supply us with ambulances to transport people to the hospital. The Black funeral directors supplied us with a hearse as an ambulance.

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

MCHR soon worked to end segregated health care in the South. But first the committee was called to Selma. The Selma to Montgomery march was originally planned as a protest of the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. On February 18, 1965, Jackson marched with protestors on the Perry County Jail in Alabama. Local and state police attacked the marchers. Jackson tried to protect his mother and elderly grandfather and an Alabama State Trooper shot Jackson in the stomach.

ALBERT TURNER:

there were probably around 100 altogether

He was carried to the Marion Hospital here in town, and he stayed there about an hour or so before - and nobody would wait on him, and then he later was taken to the hospital in Selma, where he did receive services.

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

Jimmie Lee Jackson died 8 days later at the age of 26. Fearing more violence, movement leaders in Selma asked MCHR to send medical workers. The doctor and nurse in the background were asked to march with Martin Luther King, Jr., in case he, too, was met with violence. "We hope that this will be a peaceful, non-violent demonstration of our determination to register and vote..."

NARRATOR:

there were probably around 100 altogether

MCHR continued to provide medical presence for the civil rights movement for years to come.