Skip Navigation Bar
 

Digital Gallery Browse

Letter from John A. Kenney Jr. to Leonidas H. Berry about fighting discriminatory practices of the American Medical Association

John A. Kenney Jr., chief of dermatology at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, DC, argued that the National Medical Association should no longer accept “platitudes” from the American Medical Association. Title VI of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination by any institution receiving federal funds, put teeth behind the NMA’s efforts. “Instead of our saying as we had to do…before Title VI, ‘now Mr. AMA would you please do something about this?’ We can now say ‘Mr. AMA, we are all law abiding people. What can we do now to obey the law?…We can talk now from a position of strength, rather than weakness.”

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Page with typewritten text.