Slum Medicine: Chicago’s Apartheid Health System

Harsh words for Chicago’s unequal public healthcare system in the late 1960s.

“The failure of democratic society and the free market economy to accept black Chicagoans documented in other reports of the Interuniversity Committee is nowhere more devastating in life and mind than in the bankruptcy of private medicine in black Chicago, in the very separate and unequal public facilities and services that pass for health care, and in the wide and widening gap between black and white disease and death rates that results from this dual health system.” – Preface.

This poignant text outlines a social issue that Chicago still faces more than fifty years later – devastating racial inequality in the public and private healthcare systems. Five separate essays, comprised of descriptive text, numerous maps, tables of statistics, and extensive citations, offer a compelling argument for much-needed change. Of particular interest is ‘The Geography of Disease and Death in the Two Chicagos.’