This blogpost was authored by Professor Vanessa Northington Gamble. Prof. Gamble is based at George Washington University, USA, where she is the first woman and first African American to hold their prestigious faculty position of University Professor of Medical Humanities. Prof. Gamble is an internationally recognized expert on the history of race and American medicine, health equity, and bioethics, and she works to promote equity and justice in American medicine and public health. Prof. Gamble visited the University of Bristol as a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor in February and March 2024 to collaborate with Dr. Stephen Mawdsley in the Department of History.
I spent six weeks (February 2024- March 2024) at the University of Bristol as a Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor working on the project, “Historical Implications of American Race and Medicine.” My host and collaborator was Dr. Stephen Mawdsley, Senior Lecturer in Modern American History. The goals of the project included assisting with efforts to strengthen the American Studies Research Group and to collaborate with faculty and students on themes of race, medicine, and bioethics. There is a small, but growing, number of scholars with research interests in the history of race and American medicine and Stephen is one of the most prominent in the UK. We had been friends and colleagues for several years and had frequently discussed working together and this Benjamin Meaker award gave us the opportunity to do so. (On a more personal note, Professor Susan L. Smith, Stephen’s master’s advisor, had been my graduate student and I often jokingly call him my grand mentee). I had never been to Bristol before and did not quite know what to expect. What I found was intellectual growth, engaging colleagueship, cutting-edge scholarship, a welcoming community, and professional and personal rejuvenation.
As part of the project, I gave two keynote lectures. In the first, “At the Fault Lines of Racial Inequity: African Americans and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic,” I examined the impact of this pandemic on African Americans during a time of increased anti-Black violence, disenfranchisement, and legally enforced segregation, including medical facilities. For the second keynote, “Educated in a White Space: African American Graduates of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850-1925,” I analyzed how “sisters of a darker race” navigated medical careers through racist and sexist obstacles. Both lectures attracted audiences from across campus and beyond the university.
I also gave two graduate seminars. In “Historical Perspectives on Health Inequities: Trust, Trustworthiness, and ‘Tuskegee’,” I examined the history and legacy of the United States Public Health Syphilis Study (USPHS) at Tuskegee (more frequently called the Tuskegee Syphilis Study). This was a forty-year study conducted by the USPHS in which 400 Black men from Macon County Alabama went untreated, unbeknownst to them, for syphilis. I argued that African American attitudes toward medicine and public health have been inaccurately attributed to the study. I found the second graduate seminar, “Advancing a More Complex History of African American Medical History,” particularly productive. I conducted it with Dr Stephen Kenny an expert on the history of American medicine and slavery at the University of Liverpool. His participation in the seminar underscored the need for international collaborations on the study of race, medicine, and public health. During my stay in Bristol, Stephen Mawdsley and I began preliminary discussions as to how we could develop such a project. Stephen Kenny also offered me the opportunity to take my Benjamin Meaker award on the road. He invited me to give a talk in Liverpool on my upcoming biography of Dr. Virginia M. Alexander, a Black woman physician-activist who was a pioneer in health equity.
When I got to Bristol, I was exhausted but left physically rejuvenated and intellectually invigorated. Much of my healing began in the small group and one-on-one conversations (often over coffee, meals, and, yes, pints) that I had with faculty and students from across campus but especially with those affiliated with the American Studies Research Group. We shared intellectually rich discussions that focused on our research, teaching, and contemporary racial politics. These wide-ranging conversations helped me come out of my doldrums – I felt more intellectually energized and engaged than I had for quite a while and began to think that my retirement might be later, not sooner. The Benjamin Meaker award also gave me time to work on my biography. My lovely flat in Principal’s House was especially conducive to writing.
I spent much time getting acquainted with Bristol and came to love it (the cold and damp weather did not deter me). I began most mornings with the short walk from Principal’s House to Rolling Italy where the always cheerful James would make my usual order (Americano with three shots and a little milk). I enjoyed exploring the city’s streets and neighborhoods – I even got used to walking up the hills. What I did not expected was the number of great restaurants and, as the scales made plain when I returned home, I patronized quite a few of them.
There were several people who made my visit as a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor so successful, and I thank them all. I would be remiss, however, if I did not name a few. Laina Barnett was my savior. She found my passport and wallet after I had dropped them and tracked me down even before I realized that the items were missing. Matimba Swana was my guide to understanding race and bioethics in the UK and to discovering the vital multiracial neighborhood of Stokes Croft. Stephen and Helen Mawdsley were generous and caring hosts. They vigorously worked to ensure that I would be part of a community in Bristol and that I would not be alone, but thrive, in an initially unfamiliar city.
During my Benjamin Meaker award, I visited the statue of slave trader Edward Colston’s at the M Shed. I teach a course at George Washington University on the history of race, American medicine, and public health. One of the classes focuses on Dr. James Marion Sims, an enslaver and surgeon, who conducted several painful experimental surgeries on enslaved women. There are several statues throughout the United States commemorating Sims primarily as the “father of modern gynecology.” I ask my students what should be done with these statues? Destroy them? Move them? Add statues of Betsey, Anarcha, and Lucy, three of the enslaved women on whom he operated? I discovered that display of Colston at the M Shed provides a model that I think should be considered in the United States. The statue was not destroyed. It was exhibited laying down off its plinth and placed among displays highlighting historical efforts to battle oppression, including racism. My visit to M Shed and several discussions that I had while I was a Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor underscore the connected legacies of slavery between the United Kingdom and the United States and the continued need to fight them.
