The Good Doctors is an interesting and well-researched account of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a group of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals that played a large yet often ignored role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Dittmer does an excellent job portraying the people who played major roles in the organization and the sacrifices they made in order to provide medical services to other activists and bring to light the injustice of segregated health care. For their belief that every human being deserves quality health care regardless of the color of their skin, many left lucrative private practices, were ostracized by many in their professional community, and even faced violence and arrest.

This account of the unsung heroes behind the scenes of the civil rights movement is worth reading for anyone who is interested in the movement or health care. ( )

The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) was created in 1964 to provide medical care to civil rights workers during Freedom Summer, the grass roots program that sought to register thousands of black Mississippians to vote. The Magnolia State in the mid-1960s was the poorest and most repressive state in the Union, as many of its black citizens were starving, dying from preventable illness, and in great fear of seeking their civil rights due to hostile whites, state and local police that brutally preserved the status quo, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South.

The MCHR expanded its operations throughout the South, after some initial missteps, and played a major role in desegregating hospitals that were in violation of federal law, providing health care and education for blacks who had never been seen by a physician, and treating activists and local residents felled by police and angry mobs during civil rights marches and demonstrations. The MCHR also took an active role in opposing the Vietnam War, encouraging medical schools to enroll more minority physicians, opening community health centers, and lobbying for universal health care.

In later years the effectiveness of the MCHR was diminished by internecine feuds and external opposition, and it withered and collapsed during the early 1980s due to financial difficulty and a lack of purpose. Despite its short existence and limited successes, its efforts continue to bear fruit: many more minority physicians and nurses are in practice in the Deep South and throughout the United States; community health centers continue to operate in underserved areas; and medical organizations such as Doctors for America and Physicians for a National Health Program continue to lobby for universal health care.

John Dittmer, a professor of history at DePauw University, does a great service by chronicling the efforts of the MCHR in "The Good Doctors". However, the book is marred by an overemphasis on detail, as the author includes too many people and facts, which made this a difficult book to enjoy. I doubt that I would read it to the end if I wasn't highly interested in the topic. The story of the MCHR is a compelling one, but it deserves a better narrative, and I would only recommend "The Good Doctors" for the reader with a strong desire to learn about this Committee. ( )

As this was an Early Reviewers book from LT, I cracked open the cover with great anticipation…read a few chapters and then really slowed down.

Author John Dittmer bogs the reader down with too many details. The story is definitely set in an interesting time.

The Medical Committee for Human Rights was organized in the summer of 1964 by medical professionals, mostly white and Northern, who had a desire to provide care and support for Civil Rights activists who were organizing black voters in Mississippi. They left their lives and lucrative private practices to march beside and tend the wounds of demonstrators from Freedom Summer, to the March on Selma, to the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Their firsthand view on the dramatic battle for Civil Rights, encouraged the group to expand its mission to other causes such as poverty to the war in Vietnam, and finally the whole US healthcare system. They pioneered community health plans and brought medical care to areas that were not being served. ( )

Movements, revolutions, any societal change is accompanied with power struggles, politics, egos, varying interpretations of the mission and more. John Dittmer's book well documents the history and work of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. The MCHR began in the 1960's, originally to provide medical services to those involved in the civil rights demonstrations and work in the South.

Dittmer gives us the backdrop of the struggles of those involved in the civil rights movement and describes the resulting impact of the work of MCHR. From the beginning and to it end in the late 70's, MCHR was fraught with internal struggles about their purpose, the way services would be established and where, who would stand in leadership positions and always, always fundraising.

This background is important. Many write of social movements, even wars, only in terms of the glory with spotlight on the victors and heroes. Dittmer tells us of the internal politics and wranglings of the personalities of MCHR, illustrating that despite this, dedicated men and women made a difference. The MCHR core of medical professionals made a difference, moving the civil rights movement forward and certainly changing the delivery of health care to the poor in America.

MCHR physicians and nurses made public the racist terrorism taking place in the South, pressured the US President and Congress to enforce and enact legislation to combat segregation, and establish a system of health information and services to the blacks in the South. Their work impacted many other areas through the years, such as workplace safety, even making public dangerous experiments with drugs taking place in institutions in America, inflicted on helpless children, the poor and unsuspecting patients.

Accomplishments and the lasting impact of MCHR is far reaching and continues to today as the debate and struggle for health care, quality health care for all Americans continues. MCHR as an organization was little known as they carried on their work and impacted the course of civil rights and health care. The group made a difference and the core men and women carried on after MCHR ceased to be. As individuals and sometimes working together, former members continued social activism, established model clinics for poor communities that exist today, taught and influenced medical school curriculums, and in many others way advanced health care for poor.

As the debate on American health in 2009 continues, with it's own internal politics, egos and struggles, the voices of MCHR
can be heard on public radio, in congressional hearings, their work evident in social action movements - wherever the cause for human rights calls. ( )

I started this book, as the topic seemed pretty intriguing -- another side to the civil rights fight in the 1950s and 1960s. I got through the first 100 pages or so, and it was okay, but I found that it has a weakness I've seen elsewhere in history writing: Too much detail and not enough compelling development line.

Yes, it's laudable the degree of research that must have gone into this book. And for someone who is really fascinated with this topic, it is probably a very good read. However, like another history of the Cold War I read recently for this web site, the author inserts so many facts that should be evident to the educated history reader that it takes away from the pace of a book when read by an aspiring expert.

The personalities in this book are very interesting. They lie on the margins of Black society and not really within the margins of White society. This is a point the author brings out. But the book doesn't grab the reader with the complexities of their lives and the drama that enfolds them. And yet it doesn't grab the reader with the overall theme of civil rights development in the medical community either. At least not this reader.

Maybe I should have skipped ahead to the later chapters to see how the author synthesizes it together, and where he ends up. But I have to say, one doesn't usually recommend a book that one has to skip through and not read cover-to-cover.