Medicare Hospital Certification Program Interview: Dr. Norman Robbins

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Download the PDF: Robbins_Norman_oral_history (196 kB)

Dr. Norman Robbins Oral History

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GM: I'm Gordon Margolin. Today is April 5th, 2021 and I'm about to facilitate an oral history with Dr. Norman Robbins, one of the four individual faculty members from NIH who undertook the role of investigating some of the aspects of medical care of Black citizens in the South, back  in 1966. We're going to talk about all of Dr. Robbins’ experiences and I think you'll find them terribly interesting. This venture occurred just before the onset of the Medicare program and the federal government was very interested in making sure that everything was in place when the program went into effect. This history is being recorded on Zoom as we are still in the Covid-19 pandemic. This is the best we'll be able to do in case there are some difficulties with the recording.

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NR: Well, I listened to the interview with Stanley Rapoport about the Deacons and Bogalusa [Louisiana] and I never heard of that kind of organization in Mississippi. The people there, I think, were generally committed to non-violent actions, even though Mississippi was, if anything, worse than Alabama in terms of the brutality that they were subject to.  In fact, I don't want to get off the subject, but that march was around the turning point in terms of the Black resistance to White suppression in that “Black power” became the new motto. Stokely Carmichael and others like him took over—this was related to that Canton episode. John Lewis who had been the head of SNCC was demoted as it were because he stuck with MLK Jr. on non-violence. John Lewis after that Canton episode and everything else, left for Atlanta and the rest is history, as you know, about his life. It was a turning point for the whole civil rights movement. I didn't realize what was going on at the time. I heard “Black “Black power” being talked about but didn't realize that many people were shifting in that direction.

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