there is a walled-off former main entrance on the east side of the old brick
building. I look closer, and chiseled above the entryway (that leads
nowhere) is the identification, EATON BUILDING. This building used to
be on the backside of the medical campus, and that set of doors used to be
the main entrance. Peering through the dark summer evening, Midwestern
fireflies providing traces of light, I squint a little more at the Eaton
Building sign, and realize that not long ago, carved into stone were the
words “Negro Ward.”
Following the standoff at the University of Alabama between Governor
George Wallace and the federal government regarding the admission of
two African American students, President John F. Kennedy on June 11,
1963, gave a heartfelt plea that would become known as the “Civil Rights
Address.” Initially standing “in the schoolhouse door,” Governor Wallace
relented, but that night, President Kennedy delivered a thirteen-minute
speech about equal access to public institutions for black Americans,
saying, “I am therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all
Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public
—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.
This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary
indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do.”
Five months later, President Kennedy was assassinated, and while there
are boundless disastrous consequences associated with his slaying, there
are at least two surprising accomplishments that likely would not have
occurred without his murder. Before Kennedy’s original term had ended,
and within seven months of his slaying, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. One year later, Medicare
and Medicaid were simultaneously established by the signing of the Social
Security Amendments of 1965. The two most significant acts, part of what
Johnson called the “Great Society,” share an unanticipated linkage,
enjoying a symbiotic relationship not fully appreciated, even today. In
President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address, when cataloguing the various
institutions (hotels, restaurants, theaters, and retail stores) that barred
equal access to Americans of African descent, he never mentioned
hospitals. In 1963, it was too much to ask for, and not realistic, but within
a few short years, most of the country’s over five hundred “Negro Wards”