Paul Bertau Cornely (March 9, 1906 – February 9, 2002) was an American physician, public health pioneer, and civil rights activist.
[3] Cornely was an intern at Lincoln Hospital, which was financially supported by wealthy white donors because white people believed that treating diseases amongst Black communities “would prevent spreading diseases to whites.”[3] Upon finishing his internship, Cornely was not able to find a surgical residency program that would admit Black physicians, so he returned to the University of Michigan to complete a public health doctoral degree.
[5] In his early career, he visited historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the United States, where he monitored the quality of health centers and other campus facilities.
[3] As part of this work, he identified severe shortcomings in the number of healthcare workers (some 19 nurses to serve 24,000 students) and was not impressed by the sanitary conditions of cafeterias.
[3] The Imhotep conference series hoped to encourage voluntary desegregation; looking to give Black communities access to quality care at otherwise white hospitals.
[3] While the conference series raised public awareness about the impact of racism on healthcare, it was largely boycotted by white hospitals and nursing schools.
[3] He visited Houston, California, and Montana, where he observed chronic neglect and abuse of people of color at the hands of government officials.
[3] Cornely frequently called out pseudoscientific studies, all of which ignore the social determinants of health and well-being, that claimed Black people were inherently inferior to whites.
[3] In 1985, he wrote that “discrimination and segregation have no place in health.”[12] Beyond civil rights, Cornely was an advocate for public health for all and argued that the government should provide healthcare to all citizens before getting "a man on the moon.
"[3] Cornely was aware of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment throughout its existence, and taught it as a case study to African-American medical students at Howard University.
[13] In later life, he described his failure to realize its ethical problems as a major mistake: "I considered myself to be an activist...yet here right under my nose something is happening and I'm blind.