Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women’s Health Activism in America, 1890-1950

Winner of the 1996 The Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians

Winner of the 1997 Lavinia L. Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing

"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 

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired moves beyond the depiction of African Americans as mere recipients of aid or as victims of neglect and highlights the ways black health activists created public health programs and influenced public policy at every opportunity. Smith also sheds new light on the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment by situating it within the context of black public health activity, reminding us that public health work had oppressive as well as progressive consequences.