Book Talk with David Barton Smith: Malicious Intent
On Wednesday, July 31, at 4:30pm, at the West Tisbury Library, author David Barton Smith will give a presentation about his new book, Malicious Intent: Murder and the Perpetuation of Jim Crow Health Care. Free and open to the public.
About the book: “‘Do we want to perpetuate a Jim Crow health system?’ A brilliant, idealistic physician named Jean Cowsert asked that question in Alabama in 1966. Her answer was no—and soon after, she died under suspicious circumstances. Unearthing the truth of Cowsert’s life and death is a central concern of David Barton Smith’s Malicious Intent. Unearthing the grim history of our health care system is another.
Race-related disparities in American death rates, exacerbated once again by the COVID-19 pandemic, have persisted since the birth of the modern US medical system a century ago. A unique but perpetually unequal history has prevented the United States from providing the kind of health care assurances that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations. The underlying story is one of political, medical, and bureaucratic machinations, all motivated by a deliberate Jim Crow systemic design. In Malicious Intent, David Barton Smith traces the Jean Cowsert story and the cold case of her death as a through line to explain the construction and fulfillment of an unequal health care system that would rather sacrifice many than provide for Black Americans.
Cowsert’s suspicious death came at a key moment in the struggle for universal health care in the wealthiest country on earth. Malicious Intent is a history of those failed efforts and a story of selective amnesia about one doctor’s death and the movement she fought for.” (Vanderbilt University Press)
About the author:
David Barton Smith is an Emeritus Professor at Temple and Research Professor at Drexel’s Health Management and Policy Department. He was the recipient of a 1995 RWJ Health Policy Research Investigator Award to study the racial desegregation of America’s hospitals. His book, The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare and the Struggle to Transform America’s Health System, Vanderbilt University Press, received the Goldberg Prize for the year’s best book in the area of medicine. He assisted in the development of a related documentary.