A City Without Care - (Studies in Social Medicine) by Kevin McQueeney (Hardcover)

About the Book

"New Orleans is a city that is rich in culture, music, and history. It's also long been a site of some of the most intense racially based medical inequities in the United States. Kevin McQueeney traces that inequity for 300 years of the city's history, beginning at its founding in 1718. McQueeney argues that this racist system emerged as a key component of the slave-based economy in the city, which quickly became institutionalized with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. He also shows that, despite legislation and court victories in the Civil Rights era, an apartheid health care system still exists today"--

Book Synopsis

New Orleans is a city that is rich in culture, music, and history. It has also long been a site of some of the most intense racially based medical inequities in the United States. Kevin McQueeney traces that inequity from the city's founding in the early eighteenth century through three centuries to the present. He argues that racist health disparities emerged as a key component of the city's slave-based economy and quickly became institutionalized with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. McQueeney also shows that, despite legislation and court victories in the civil rights era, a segregated health care system still exists today.

In addition to charting this history of neglect, McQueeney also suggests pathways to fix the deeply entrenched inequities, taking inspiration from the "long civil rights" framework and reconstructing the fight for improved health and access to care that started long before the boycotts, sit-ins, and marches of the 1950s and 1960s. In telling the history of how New Orleans has treated its Black citizens in its hospitals, McQueeney uncovers the broader story of how urban centers across the country have ignored Black Americans and their health needs for the entire history of the nation.

Review Quotes

McQueeny uses an impressive range of archival, government, primary, and secondary materials. His tone in A City without Care reflects confidence that he has proved in his thesis: health care for Black New Orleans residents, with roots in racial slavery, has always been a racial apartheid system."--Journal of American History

About the Author

Kevin McQueeney is assistant professor of history at Nicholls State University.