A City without Care:
300 Years of Racism, Health Disparities and Health Care Activism in New Orleans
An Author Talk by Dr. Kevin McQueeney
About the Program
Professor Kevin McQueeney discusses his book, “A City without Care: 300 Years of Racism, Health Disparities, and Health Care Activism in New Orleans.”
“A City Without Care” traces the history of racially based medical inequities in New Orleans from the city’s founding to the present. McQueeney details how racist health disparities emerged as a key component of the city’s slave-based economy and quickly became institutionalized with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. Despite legislation and court victories in the civil rights era, a segregated healthcare system still exists today. In addition to charting this history of neglect,
McQueeney also suggests pathways to fix the deeply entrenched inequities, taking inspiration from the “long civil rights” framework and reconstructing the fight for improved health and access to care that started long before the boycotts, sit-ins, and marches of the 1950s and 1960s. In telling the history of how New Orleans has treated its Black citizens in its hospitals, McQueeney uncovers the broader story of how urban centers across the country have ignored Black Americans and their health needs throughout the nation’s history. McQueeney relied heavily on the City Archives & Special Collections for his work, using a number of collections including the City Planning and Zoning Commission Records; Hospital Collection; Housing Authority of New Orleans Collection; the New Orleans Health Department Collection; and the papers of various mayors and city council members. The materials at the City Archives proved invaluable in examining how the city government’s actions have directly contributed to health and health care inequity, including zoning policies that allowed the concentration of health hazards like factories, the municipal incinerator, and municipal dumps in Black majority neighborhoods; the short-lived and under-funded health clinics in the public housing units; and city leaders’ support of segregated health care institutions.
About the Author
Kevin McQueeney is an Assistant Professor of History and the Coordinator of the Black Studies Certificate Program at Nicholls State University. Kevin earned his M.A. in History at the University of New Orleans, and his PhD in History at Georgetown University. In May 2023, the University of North Carolina Press published his book A City Without Care: 300 Years of Racism, Racial Health Disparities, and Black Health Activism in New Orleans. He has published articles in The Journal of African American History, Louisiana History, Federal History, and Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, as well as two book chapters in edited volumes. Prior to his career in academia, Kevin worked as a construction site supervisor with the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity.