4063 15915 1 PB
4063 15915 1 PB
4063 15915 1 PB
The 1910 Flexner Report was a seemingly benevolent document intended to standardize medical
education and increase the quality of physicians in the United States. Despite good intentions, it
was a document with implications for African-Americans. The Flexner Report caused the closing
of historically black medical schools, leaving two in the nation Howard Medical School in the
North and Meharry Medical College in the South. African-Americans were excluded from the
institution of medicine, leaving blacks vulnerable to institutional abuses in health that facilitated
distrust and disenfranchisement. This paper argues that despite the trauma experienced from
violation and exclusion, Meharry Medical College serves as a chronotope that helps rebuild and
symbolically re-member black collective identity and memory within and beyond medical edu-
cation. The trauma includes present day black medical students and physicians not considered
the equals of their white counterparts and black patients who suffered physical abuse and the
infringement of self-determination. That created crises in collective African-American identity,
sparking social pain. The Flexner Report is deeply implicated in structural inequality that has
systematically disenfranchised African-Americans in medical education. Moving beyond struc-
tural inequalities, the Flexner Report is an unacknowledged source of trauma in the collective
African-American health experience with both literal and figurative ramifications.
The Flexner Report was a seemingly benevo- itself. This paper then applies the novel theory of afro-
lent document with traumatic racial implications for cultural trauma to the Flexner Report, which I argue is
African-Americans and their health experience. In the reflected in African-American collective memory and
United States in the early 1900s, actions were taken to identity. Afterward, post-Flexner crises in the African-
organize and enhance the field of medical education American community forced sterilization and the
to address health care concerns. The Flexner Report Tuskegee syphilis experiment are also explored with
changed the institution of medicine in the United respect to collective identity. Lastly, the reconstruc-
States through the closing and standardization of tion and re-membering of the legacy of black medical
medical schools. Exclusion and violation experienced education is analyzed through Meharry Medical Col-
by black medical students, physicians, and patients lege as a chronotope that both literally and figuratively
historically and in the present day are markers of heals the African-American community and re-claims
trauma that not only made African-Americans vulner- Black medical education. This approach is novel
able to institutional abuses but fostered distrust and because the Flexner Report has only been evaluated
marginalization. Meharry Medical College is a site of for its structural effects. Going a step further, theory
healing for African-American collective identity. With is used to ascribe meaning to the Flexner Report as
its history of educating African-American physicians source of trauma and Meharry is evaluated as a site of
and addressing black health disparities through ser- intervention.
vice to the Nashville and rural communities, Meharry The African-American community, more ac-
serves as a chronotope that has helped rebuild and curately referred to as communities, is diverse and full
symbolically re-member black collective memory. of varied health experiences. At the same time, institu-
To evaluate the complex relationship between tional and systemic powers have subjected raced black
the Flexner Report and the African-American heath bodies to a general disenfranchised, marginalized and
experience in proper context, this paper establishes the traumatic health care experience that dates back to
history of black healthcare and medical education first. slavery. To operationalize the black health experience,
Then the events that primed the commissioning of the this paper focuses on the collectivity, not individual
Flexner Report are discussed along with the document experiences. That shared experience not only unifies