One hundred years ago, a line of Black doctors’ offices in the Greenwood neighborhood were burned down during the Tulsa Race Massacre. After a brief recovery, the Black community’s medical infrastructure entered a long decline. It has never recovered.
One hundred years ago, a line of Black doctors’ offices in the Greenwood neighborhood were burned down during. After a brief recovery, the Black community’s medical infrastructure entered a long decline. It has never recovered.
In Tulsa County as a whole, Black infants are 2.5 times more likely to die before their first birthday than white infants, state health data show. North Tulsa lacks urgent-care centers, and its closest hospital is located downtown, considered by residents to be outside the community, according to Tulsa Health Department’s Chief Operating Officer Reggie Ivey, who grew up in North Tulsa and is the first Black senior leader in the department.
In 1920, before the massacre, the Greenwood district was home to roughly 9,000 Black residents, and their medical needs were served by at least 17 doctors and physicians, including the nationally renowned surgeon, Dr. A.C. Jackson. Gospel singer and Grammy Award nominee John P. Kee remembers the stories his father told him about the race massacre and his father’s great uncle, Dr. Key. Though his father’s family largely lived in poverty, the family knew there was a well-to-do family member named “Dr. James” in Tulsa and “he was an educated Black man”—at times resented for changing his last name from “Kee” to the more anglicized “Key,” according to family stories Mr. Kee’s father told him.
The hospital closed in 1967, due in part to funding issues and competition from other hospitals, which after the end of segregation opened their doors to Black patients, residents say. It retained only its outpatient services. Another quarter of the city’s population lives in South Tulsa, where there are three general hospitals and another two specialty hospitals for heart disease and psychiatric care.
Life-expectancy gaps like Tulsa’s were found in 20 other communities across the country, from major cities to rural towns, the university’s research found. Dr. Chapman said residents in neighborhoods need access to an emergency room during a heart attack, but to prevent heart attacks, they need safe housing and access to affordable, nutritious food.
But in the 1980s and 1990s, many private practices began to close their doors, Mr. Ivey of the health department said, as older doctors retired without anyone taking over their practices, and many doctors found it harder to run clinics without being connected to a major hospital system.
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