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| Black Panther clinics |
In the 1960s and 1970s, the central part of the Panthers’ work for the rights of black people was the organization of mutual aid programs such as the “Free Breakfast for School Children Program”, which came to serve a free breakfast for over 20,000 children living in conditions of malnutrition in 60 different black communities across the USA. Other projects included drug and alcohol detoxification services; accompaniment services for the elderly who needed to visit the doctor; health education programs and even an ambulance service. In the 1970s, the Panthers volunteers managed 13 different clinics. During this process they gained sufficient experience in making authoritative interventions in the health policies and medical research debates of the time.
In their clinics, they carried out a mass clinical screening that significantly contributed to the study of sickle cell anaemia (a genetic disease that particularly affects people of African descent). In addition, the Panthers opposed pseudoscientific and racist-based medical testing programs, such as the UCLA Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, which intended to perform brain operations to counteract aggressive behaviour, and thefamous experiment in Tuskegee, Alabama, a clinical study that infected about 600 black men with the syphilis virus without their knowledge, under the pretense of offering medical care.
Note based on Rebelling with Care (WeMake, 2019)