GUEST COLUMN
|
July 2008
Meet Our Featured Guest Columnist:
Dr. Jack Geiger
Dr. Jack Geiger is a founding member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and established the first community health centers in the United States.
Q: How did you first get involved in health and human rights issues?
A: I've been involved in civil rights and human rights for 65 years, since I first started as a teenager in 1942. That was in college in Madison, Wisconsin, and I ended up working with Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph on the first planned march on Washington, which not many people know about, the threat of which produced FDR's executive order banning discrimination in defense plants. A year later, I was one of the people who started, I think, the second chapter in the country of the Congress of Racial Equality with Jim Farmer and it has just gone on in one way or another since then.
A: I've been involved in civil rights and human rights for 65 years, since I first started as a teenager in 1942. That was in college in Madison, Wisconsin, and I ended up working with Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph on the first planned march on Washington, which not many people know about, the threat of which produced FDR's executive order banning discrimination in defense plants. A year later, I was one of the people who started, I think, the second chapter in the country of the Congress of Racial Equality with Jim Farmer and it has just gone on in one way or another since then.