Serving the People, Serving the Community: The Medical Activism of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Political Party

Emerging in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party joined the ranks of other social movements to embrace alternative health care institutions. The pasrty held a 'social health' viewpoint. This view explicitly connected the health of a society with the well being of individuals and of body politics. Poor Blacks in the 1960s were medically underserved at best and at worst subjected to horrible mistreatment in some state hospitals. In Chicago, the Black Panther Party chapter served the "people, mind, and soul."

Fred Hampton’s championed and organized several large scale community service programs during his last year alive in 1969. These were known as survival programs. One of these was a free medical clinic, operated by and for the people. Community empowerment was at the core of the Rainbow Coalition, and medical activism played a crucial role in gaining the support of the people. Fred Hampton lived to serve the people, and his legacy would live on in with the Jake Winters Medical Center.

Deputy Minister of Health Ronald 'Doc' Satchel was charged with coordinating and operating the free medical clinic. Satchel would lead the outreach effort to recruit doctors and healthcare workers, as well as obtaining adequate medical supplies.

Satchell would later work with Dr. Tolbert Small, the Oakland Chapter’s physician, to help other chapters open and implement their health programs. In 1972 Satchell visited China with other Black Panther health radicals to learn new medical developments. Writing in Black Panther newspaper in 1970 for the need for community based medicine, "the medical profession within this capitalist society is composed generally of people working for their own benefit and advancement rather than the humane aspects of medical care".

Bobby Rush and party member Ralph Bostick worked to request and receive donations to ensure the clinic could open by January 1970. Here they inspect donated hospital beds for the clinic during its dedication.

The free medical clinic would be named in honor of Jake Winters, who was killed on November 13, 1969, during a shootout with two Chicago policemen, who also died. Bobby Rush became the most public facing member of the party after Fred Hampton’s death. Rush is pictured with family members of Jake Winters in Dec 1969, just days before the clinic began operations in Jake’s memory. Bobby Rush would play a leading role in the opening of the clinic.

In the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton Bobby Rush speaks to the urgent need for such a place in their community:
"In that area, where you have a high infant mortality rate, where you have lead poisoning, where you have inadequate medical service, we saw the basic needs for free medical service and we worked hard and worked over a long period of time to make that a reality..."

"Now up till this day in the black community, you have doctors there who are more concerned with private wealth rather than public health. The concept behind the medical center is that we would take the profit out of the medical profession. Our medical center is a direct result of the basic need in the black community for free medical service. -Bobby Rush, 1971"

The Spurgeon Jake Winters People’s Medical Center was founded on Dec 25 1969 at 3850 West 16th Street. After brief harassment by the government forces, the clinic began operations on January 4, 1970.

Spurgeon Jake Winters Medical Center’s first patient, Lovie Bernard being treated by nurse Florence Watson. Upon opening, the clinic served more than 2,000 black Chicagoans in its first two months, announcing the opening of the center by sending medical teams door to door in Chicago’s west side. In 1970 the medical staff of the Jake Winter’s Free Medical Clinic consisted of 10 doctors, twelve nurses, and two registered technicians, as well as interns from medical schools around the city.

The Black Panther Newspaper championed the Illinois Chapter’s medical work: "One of the Black Panther Party programs in Chicago is the People’s Medical Care Center, located in the Lawndale ghetto on the West Side. The center is named for Spurgeon ‘Jake’ Winters, a martyred Panther killed by the police last year. The only publicity the center has received came when the city authorities attempted to close it a few days after it opened in December [1969], charging numerous building and Board of Health violations. But the center remains open, in spite of harassment,and it regularly treats more than 100 patients every week.'"

Mrs. Woods, one of the center’s volunteers, "we are training some of the young people to do laboratory urinalysis and blood tests, and teams of people from the community are organized to canvass the neighborhood and bring the center to the people... Our teams take their blood pressure, medical histories, and in general determine if there are people suffering from illness. If illness is discovered, whether chronic or just simple ailments, the person is urged to visit the center, where an examination, treatment, and prescription are all free."

'Patients don’t get a political rap before they see a physician, but the very existence of the clinic is political.-Medical Student Volunteer, 1972.' The clinics not only provided free healthcare, but also specialized in preventative medicine in order to foster collective health and community interdependence. As Chairman Fred Hampton once stated "First you have free breakfast, then you have free medical care, then you have free bus rides, and soon you have FREEDOM!"'

In 1972, The national Black Panther amended point 6 of the 10 point platform: "We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care."

The strength of the Panther’s community outreach meant there was no shortage of volunteers to help. The clinic was open 6 days a week. The clinic’s work was described very positively in a survey of Chicago free medical clinics published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1972. According to that account, over 14 months the Spurgeon Jake Winters Free People’s Medical Care Center saw 1400 patients at least once, and during the sample week of April 1971 served the needs of 75 patients

'Doc Satchell oversaw and directed the clinic. “We can have patients come through and see a doctor, actually gets through, get a test what have you, then they comes in and see the people’s advocate. That’s a community person, a person in power that acts like a liaison between the center here itself and the community. He asks them what kind of service they got here in the center, you know, any other criticism of the medical center itself. It’s also to deal with problems outside, medical problems, you know. People’s advocate also has a resource file. In this file we have teachers, sociologists, speech therapists, social workers." -Satchell'

Like other free clinics in Chicago, the Jake Winters Medical Center provided services to the community based upon the following principles: 1. Health care is a right and must be free at the point of delivery 2. The community served must have the controlling interest in the planning, organization and administration of the clinics 3. Humanity, dignity and concern for the patient must be the mode in which health care is delivered 4.

The Jake Winters Medical Center attracted volunteer obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians, dentists and other specialties, allowing a wide range of services to be served to the community.

'The Clinic provided a variety of services, such as first aid care, physical examinations, prenatal care, testing for lead poisoning, high blood pressure and most importantly, sickle cell anemia testing.'

'The paths of the Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Black Panther Party merged in an effort to achieve a common goal: delivering health care to the most disadvantaged among us. One of the physicians who joined the clinic was Dr. Quentin Young'

Dr. Quentin Young. The son of two Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Young was politically and socially motivated early on in his life. The discrimination he saw in medical care towards black Chicagoans and the rise of the Nazis in Europe led him to dedicate his life to justice and medicine.'

Young brought an extensive network of resources, staff and volunteers due to his role as National Chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR). In 1966 Young worked with Martin Luther King Jr to confront segregation in Chicago, and King became his patient after being attacked during a march that same year.

Young met with Doc Satchell and Fred Hampton in early 1968, and immediately was on board, 'I was a perfect frame of mind for it. The idea that people would work for their own solution of their own problems.'Young and Doc Satchell would work closely together through the clinic’s existence.

When the clinic first opened, the vast majority of younger doctors volunteering did not wear any clothing indicating they were a physician. “After about two weeks of the clinic opening Doc Satchell called all the doctors into the break area and said he wanted to tell us something. . . .Doc pointed to a rack that had at least fifty jackets of all sizes and colors. ‘Pick the one you like, but we’ll expect you to wear a jacket here so the patients will understand that by the outward symbols you are indeed a doctor in addition to your great desire to serve the people” -Quentin Young

A native of Vienna, Dr. Kast fled Austria after the Nazi annextion of Austria in 1938. In 1967, he was dismissed as director of psychiatry service for the Lawndale Mental Health Center for encouraging study groups to discuss black power and underlying economic problems affecting the poor. Following the closure of the Jake Winters Clinic, in 1982 Kast would found and direct another free clinic, St. Basil`s Health Service-Free Peoples Clinic at 1850 W. Garfield Blvd, where he worked until his death in 1988.

Dr. Herbert Odum, of Flint, Michigan, was the volunteer dentist at the clinic and an accomplished boxer before dental school. At the age of 46, he returned to the ring, making him the oldest fighter with a Illinois professional boxing license. He stated that he would 'knock em out and invited his opponent to see him for dental work after a fight. In his final boxing event, at age 49, he was victorious.

Sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disorder caused by a recessive gene. The disease causes a lack of healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. Sickle cell anemia overwhelmingly affects people of African descent, and had received no widespread screening in the United States prior to the 1960s and 1970s. Although the disease has no cure, knowing whether you are a carrier of the gene is crucial for avoiding risks in genealogy, as well crucial for administering treatments to those with the disease.'

The national Black Panther Party’s sickle cell anemia campaign began in May of 1971, announced in a Black Panther newspaper article titled "The People’s Fight against Sickle Cell Anemia Begins."

In May 1971, the Jake Winters Clinic became the first Black Panther medical center to begin conducting free sickle cell testing. 600 children were examined in the first three days. By 1972 the Chicago party purported to have tested more than 2,500 students in 5 public elementary schools with express consent of the local board of education. All of the students were given referrals for genetic counseling sessions, and the implications of the sickling trait were discussed and, in cases of an anemia diagnosis, treatment options recommended. Doc Satchel would travel nationally to Panther clinics in other cities to help spread the Chicago chapter’s testing initiatives.

The Spurgeon Jake Winters Medical Center and the IL Panthers went on the offensive against sickle cell, and were praised by both public institutions, the community and the national party for their effective screening and results, which had proved more difficult in other locations. The Panther’s prior community activism had paid off, as they were now trusted enough to provide the testing Black people needed.

In September 1972 journalist Edwin Black published an article in Chicago Guide (now Chicago Magazine) advocating that the Party’s campaign was the model for the government to follow. The IL health agency was not informing individuals it screen that they carried the sickle cell trait.Two months prior, a July 1972 New York Times report detailed the barbaric Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

A “prominent Chicago research physician” stated, “A large body of….expert opinion, as I am, that it is no accident that these people were used for the syphilis thing, or that race is unrelated ot the lack of sickle-cell programs” The agency reversed its “non notification” policy because in the words of one board executive, “the Black Panther program had forced the city into it” by once again exposing the contradiction present in American society and medicine.

Spurgeon Jake Winters Medical Center stopped operating in 1974. The sickle cell anemia testing program was undertaken nationally, and the Panthers’ public actions against the disease prompted the US government to take action in testing African children. The Party’s health politics— its provision of medical services, its health education outreach, and its social health paradigm was a struggle over the terms of black citizenship, a confrontation with the US healthcare, and a challenge to the process of biomedical racialization.

The greatest legacy of the IL BPP are its survival programs, which provided evidence that different world is possible and communities can come together to solve their problems when the state fails.