Pediatrics Group Offers ‘Long Overdue’ Apology for Racist Past

But few medical organizations have confronted the roles they played in blocking opportunities for Black advancement in the medical profession — until the American Medical Association, and more recently the American Academy of Pediatrics, formally apologized for their histories.

The A.M.A. issued an apology in 2008 for its more than century-long history of discriminating against African-American physicians. For decades, the organization predicated its membership on joining a local or state medical society, many of which excluded Black physicians, especially in the South. Keith Wailoo, a historian at Princeton University, said the group chose to “look the other way” regarding these exclusionary practices. The A.M.A.’s apology came in the wake of a paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that examined a number of discriminatory aspects of the group’s history, including its efforts to close African-American medical schools.

For some Black physicians, exclusion from the A.M.A. meant the loss of career advancement opportunities, according to Dr. Wailoo. Others struggled to gain access to the postgraduate training they needed for certification in certain medical specialties. As a result, many Black physicians were limited to becoming general practitioners, especially in the South. Some facilities also required A.M.A. membership for admitting privileges to hospitals.

By 1964, the A.M.A. changed its position and refused to certify medical societies that discriminated on the basis of race, but persistent segregation in local groups still limited Black physicians’ access to certain hospitals, as well as opportunities for specialty training and certification.

“Physicians are no different from other Americans who harbor biases,” said Dr. Wailoo, whose research focuses on race and the history of medicine. “We expect doctors to speak on the basis of science, but they’re embedded in culture in the same way everyone else is.”