8 - An Experiment in Integration

Summary

While the country’s public hospitals were still virtually all segregated, a unique experiment in medical integration took place at Fort Huachuca, involving both patients and doctors. The black hospital’s reputation for medical excellence attracted white patients – first officers, then their wives (despite the taboo of interracial intimacy), then civilians from the surrounding areas who knew they could not find such quality of care elsewhere. Prejudices about white patients’ reluctance to see black doctors were thus invalidated. Furthermore, given the inadequate qualifications of white doctors and the departure of many of them for the front, the white hospital had to call on black doctors. Care was therefore provided on an interracial basis. This experiment was tolerated by the Surgeon General’s Office, but turned out to be difficult to sustain.