[Story contributed by Jack Beckford, with Assistance from Sara Platt Williams] During the Fall of 1970, SHC was contacted by the Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization (EKWRO), centered in Floyd Co, KY. EKWRO was already doing organizing among low-income residents in this coal country of mountainous Eastern Kentucky. The dynamic leader of EKWRO, a woman …
Jack Beckford participated in the Health Fair in Eastern Kentucky in the summer of 1971. A letter home shares updates about the Health Fair, its sponsors, the Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization and the Appalachian Regional Commission, and social and business activities. Jack Beckford Letter, 26 July 1971, in the Student Health Coalition Project Collection #5649, …
Jack Beckford Letter, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill Read More »
Files transferred from the William W. Dow Papers (#05612) that document two Student Health Coalition reunions. One attended by Dow in 2009, and another hosted in Nashville in 2013 after Dow’s death in 2012. Materials include correspondence between former coalition members including Rick Davidson, Lark Hayes, Margaret Ecker, Mary Ruth Martin, Tom John, John Davis, …
Link to the Collection Finding Aid in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/05649/ This collection includes materials documenting the work of the Student Health Coalition, an organization developed at Vanderbilt University in 1969 to reach out to medically underserved communities in East Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, and Southwest Virginia, and to join with local leaders …
Profile: [Contributed by John Emmeus Davis, with the generous assistance of Jack Beckford, June 2017] Karen Blaydes (1948-2009) joined the Student Health Coalition in 1970, two weeks after graduating from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish. This was the first year that students who were not preparing for a medical career were …