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The Medical Committee for Human Rights is organized in New York.

1964

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The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), which is comprised of a leftist group of physicians, emerges as a support group for civil rights organizers working in Mississippi. More than 100 healthcare professionals, including social workers, psychologists, and nurses, travel to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer.

After the summer ends, the group becomes a permanent organization with headquarters in New York and a southern office in Jackson, Mississippi.

Between 1964-1966, MCHR will make significant contributions to ending hospital segregation. The group mobilizes to picket annually at the American Medical Association (AMA) conference, because: "until the late 1960s [the AMA] permit[s] its affiliate state associations to deny membership (and thus hospital privileges) to Black physicians" (Dittmer, 2014).

The group also runs a free clinic in Milestone–a small town in Mississippi. This clinic will become a template for community health centers, which will later be funded by the federal government.