Black physicians and the struggle for civil rights: lessons from the Mississippi experience: part 2: their lives and experiences.

Little information is available on the lives and experiences of black physicians who practiced in the South during the Jim Crow era of legalized segregation. In Mississippi and elsewhere, it is a story of disenfranchised professionals who risked life, limb, and personal success to improve the lot of those they served. In this second article on this topic, we present the stories of some of the physicians who were leaders in the civil rights movement in Mississippi as examples. Because the health disparities they sought to address have, not of their own making, been passed on to the next generation of physicians, the lessons learned from their experience are worthy of consideration.