Book Examines History, Orchestrated Demise of Black Medical Schools

A new book is shining a light on a little-known chapter of history that continues to impact healthcare today.

Former ABC11 reporter Nicole Carr’s new book, The Price of Exclusion, explores how many Black medical schools were systematically pushed out of existence in the early 1900s and how those decisions still affect the healthcare system more than a century later. The book highlights Raleigh’s Leonard Medical School at Shaw University, which opened in 1882 and trained some of the nation’s first Black physicians before it was forced to close. Carr argues that policies and decisions made decades ago helped create a shortage of Black doctors that continues today.

Carr says understanding that history helps explain many of the healthcare disparities communities are still facing today and reminds us how decisions from the past can have lasting consequences for generations.