A Load off Whose Heart? Psychiatry and the Politics of Respectability and Race Representation in Harlem, 1943-45

Authors

Dennis Doyle, St. Louis College of Pharmacy

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Abstract

In wartime Harlem, liberal mental health professionals, eager to serve the black freedom struggle, sought to depict the minds of troubled black children as human without reinforcing pernicious racial stereotypes. This paper examines how psychiatrist Viola W. Bernard and the Community Service Society struggled to portray the black community as both psychologically damaged and morally beyond reproach when publicly presenting the cases of her male and female clients. As a consequence, liberals helped champion the mental health needs of delinquent black males as a matter of racial justice while rendering young unmarried mothers effectively invisible.

First Page

54

Last Page

82

DOI

10.1093/jhmas/jrz059

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Recommended Citation

Doyle, Dennis, "A Load off Whose Heart? Psychiatry and the Politics of Respectability and Race Representation in Harlem, 1943-45" (2020). Liberal Arts Faculty Publications. 16. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrz059
https://collections.uhsp.edu/liberal-arts_pubs/16