For All the People

"Flying Black Medics project," Chicago Defender

In 1970 Leonidas H. Berry and the African Methodist Episcopal Church organized a group of Chicago medical professionals into the "Flying Black Medics." Their aim was to supply medical care to the impoverished, majority African American community in Cairo, at the southern tip of Illinois. Berry and Cairo civil rights leaders are pictured with boxes of medical supplies that accompanied the Medics on their flight south.

Courtesy National Library of Medicine