**JOURNAL OF HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR AND UNDERSERVED (JHCPU) 34.1 FEB 2023**
Disparities in health care between minority and mainstream Americans go back well beyond the beginning of formal record keeping on race differences in morbidity and mortality. One reason that stands out historically for the still disconcerting state of Black health is the relative paucity of Black physicians and other health professionals. A hundred-plus years ago there were shockingly few Black doctors attempting to care for a large, mostly rural Black population, and though the country’s Black community today is far different from what it was at the turn of the 20th century, there is still a marked lack of African American physicians, dentists and pharmacists, and still alarming disparities. Another reason is that as recently as the 1980s the mainstream health establishment turned a blind eye to the whole subject of disparate care, which precluded the development of ameliorative policies and practices.