Dr. French played a key role in coordinating first-aid efforts at major civil rights protests, including the 1965 march for voting rights from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala.
The first attempt to complete that march, on March 7, ended bloodily when protesters were beaten and gassed by state troopers. Dr. French and other members of the Medical Committee thought federal intervention was needed to protect marchers on their next attempt.
The doctors were unsuccessful at lobbying the U.S. Justice Department for help. But a sympathetic Justice lawyer told them that if Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) were overwhelmed with demands for costly medical assistance from the state, he might request federal assistance on his own.
Dr. French compiled a list of requested provisions, including ambulances, water trailers, portable toilets and trash trucks. The governor, balking at the $300,000 price tag for those measures, asked the U.S. government for military aid.
On March 21, protesters left Selma under the protection of federal troops. By the time they reached the state Capitol in Montgomery several days later, their numbers had swelled to 25,000, and their journey had become a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
The next year, James Meredith was shot and injured while attempting to protest racism with a march across Mississippi. Thousands of activists decided to take up his cause and complete his protest. According to news reports at the time, Dr. French and his wife converted their family van into an ambulance, helping lead the medical unit that oversaw the care of marchers.
The protests gave Dr. French a chance to witness firsthand the lack of quality health care available to blacks in the South. With the aim of improving the public health of poor and underserved people, he gravitated from surgery toward a new focus in preventive and community health.
That interest in took him to Boston University, where he started a department of community health in 1969. He also established a network of community health centers in Boston before moving to Africa in the 1970s.
For the next decade, he and his family lived in Ivory Coast, leading a sprawling effort to train nurses and improve public health in 20 countries in western and central Africa.
The program was a cooperative venture of the World Health Organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Boston University and each of the participating countries’ ministries of health. Working together, the agencies trained health-care workers to set up and run a network of clinics offering primary and preventive care such as immunizations and checkups for mothers and infants.
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