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The demonstration that occurred on July 3, 1923, on the streets of Tuskegee, Alabama, would turn out to be one of the most explosive events of the black hospital movement. This battle over control of the Tuskegee Veterans Hospital struck a passionate chord in the black community. This chapter explores the factors underlying the decision of the federal government to establish a national black veterans hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama, and analyzes the successful struggle of the black community to place black physicians and nurses at the facility. Several initial issues and challenges were faced in establishing a national black veterans hospital. In particular, the appropriate location for such institution was one such challenge and this is explored here. The chapter looks at the actions undertaken by Moton and his colleagues that initiated the employment of black staff at the hospital.

After World War I, struggles over black veterans’ benefits served as a milestone in the broader civil rights movement, turning veterans’ personal readjustment to civilian life into a collective racial struggle for social justice. By forcing the federal government to offer (limited) protection of black veterans’ economic and medical rights, the struggle over veterans’ benefits served as the opening gambit of a civil rights strategy that would gain momentum throughout the twentieth century as the movement focused on enlisting the federal government as an ally, rather than viewing it as a foe, in dismantling Jim Crow. Every disabled black veteran who secured hospitalization or compensation was celebrated for achieving a minor victory in the overall campaign for equal rights, helping these men avoid feeling emasculated by their dependence on government aid. The civil rights movement thus inadvertently helped ensure that one of the major goals of federal veteran policy, the quick reabsorption of veterans into civilian and community life, was achieved.

American hospitals come in a variety of flavors: teaching and non-teaching, for profit and not-for-profit, large and small, government and private, urban and rural. While the patient’s experience varies slightly depending on the type of hospital, all hospitals could be improved to better serve the needs of older patients if they implemented basic geriatric principles.

This chapter examines how Joe T. Patterson worked with more thoroughly committed segregationists to face the challenges to the Jim Crow hierarchy in the white South. It first considers the formation of two groups by segregationists in response to the US Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: the Citizens' Council and the State Sovereignty Commission. It then discusses Patterson's involvement in racist politics as both an early member of the Citizens' Council and one of the original leaders of the Sovereignty Commission, along with his defense of segregation. It also explains how Patterson and Mississippi Governor James P. Coleman used practical segregation to recast the debate away from an effort to preserve white supremacy at all costs and utilized subtle language to claim that they were looking to protect their own freedom. Finally, it explores Patterson's stand regarding the desegration of the Veterans Administration hospitals.

This chapter, by Andrea Kelley, examines the U.S. military’s integration of new screen technologies at military sites during World War II through a study of the Mills Novelty Panoram, a 16mm film jukebox machine. Through specific considerations of the Panoram at Air Force base libraries, intelligence “war room” facilities, and veterans hospitals, this chapter evaluates wartime discourses of training and therapy and how they are articulated to Panoram viewing practices. The integration of the Panoram into military life in the 1940s normalized small-screen interactions for soldiers and presaged emerging trends in postwar U.S. culture, including consumer desire for adaptable, portable, and self-operating film machines and for multiple small-screen engagements.