To Serve the Community Best”

Reconsidering Black Politics in the Struggle to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, 1976-1984

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11109053
AutoresJaclyn Kirouac-Fram (Saint Louis University, Missouri,, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen36
Número5
Páginas594-616
Fecha de publicación2010-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Urban History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0096-1442 • E-ISSN: 1552-6771
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0096144210365455
PMID20827835
OpenAlexW1971073619
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas2

The move to consolidate, and eventually to close, Homer G. Phillips Hospital sparked a major uprising in St. Louis, Missouri, during the years 1976 through 1984. This article explores the struggle in St. Louis’s black community to keep open, and later to reopen, Homer G. Phillips Hospital from a vantage point that demonstrates the diversity of opinion surrounding the struggle. For many black St. Louis residents, the physical space of Homer G. Phillips Hospital was a metaphor for identity, a manifestation of citizenship rights, and a means of delineating a territory of shared histories, understandings, and values. For others, it was a relic of segregation and racism. In seeking to understand the diversity of public reaction, this article addresses class antagonism, examines the varied and divergent motivations for eliminating or maintaining services at the hospital, and reconsiders the discourse of “black politics.” It is a decisive illustration of how the national twin crises of deindustrialization and privatization affected a heterogeneous black community

Aesthetics · Citizenship · Deindustrialization · Diversity (politics · Identity (music · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society