To Help My People: Medicine and the Black International

Both medicine and anthropology generated pseudoscientific answers that pathologized Africans and justified white domination. But both disciplines also pushed back against spurious racial hierarchies. Medically trained African intellectuals engaged in those efforts—and moved between Central Africa and the Jim Crow South more widely than has been appreciated. I trace one part of this history through the story of Malawi’s first medical doctor (and sometime anthropologist), Daniel Sharpe Malekebu.