Health
The most basic improvement for African Americans was (and is) improving the quality of life by ensuring better health. Booker T. Washington promoted this through his obsession with tooth brushing, bathing, clothes washing and eating healthy food. Good health would directly result in higher productivity and greater respect from the white community. Washington earned his education by cleaning the classrooms at Tuskegee. He believed poverty was no excuse for squalor. As a physician, health was naturally a focus of James Dickey’s life. His feats of heroism included:
- He controlled a typhoid fever epidemic by convincing the city to provide free water throughout the black neighborhood. He used churches, schools, and women’s clubs to teach African Americans the causes of illness and how to eliminate the bacteria.
- Since African Americans had access to only two hospital beds in a shack behind the Doak-Stromberg-Vaughn hospital, Dickey convinced the city to allow him to use an abandoned boarding house as a hospital during the typhoid fever epidemic. Two years later, he bought the property and renovated it into the only colored hospital for a 100 mile radius. He and his wife decided that if patients couldn’t afford hospitalization, they would cover the costs themselves.
- He negotiated with the State Department of Health for free vaccinations and used all of his contacts to convince colored Taylorites to take the vaccine for little or no charge.
- He used the same method (churches, schools, and women’s clubs) to teach expectant mothers to get prenatal care; if they couldn’t afford it, he would provide it for free. While the young mothers were under his care, he taught them proper feeding habits for infants, specifically teaching them how to get free milk regularly through government programs.
- Syphilis and venereal disease were rampant in the black community. He told the Saturday Evening Post, “ The condition became so alarming that I established a venereal disease clinic with the idea of making each case noninfectious and, where possible, of curing it.” Since the cost of monthly care was more than a black family earned, he went through the Texas Department of Health to provide the medicine for free with a minimal fee for his services, if he charged anything at all.
- He served on the board of directors for the State Tuberculosis Hospital for Negroes in Kerrville, TX and was able to send patients at an early stage for treatment, before the patient could infect his entire family.
- He found the source of polio during an outbreak in 1949. He worked with the city to enclose the open sewer and raze the slum.