By Susan Smith

"Susan Smith's book addresses one of the most understudied aspects of African American and American public health and medical history: the emergence of black health activism in the United States... Drawing upon an impressive range of archival sources deposited at historically black colleges, and upon interviews and oral histories, Smith's case studies of the work of black midwives, public health nurses, and sorority women support her argument that black women played a key role in black health reform for much of this century."-Bulletin of the History of Medicine