Care Underground: Activists and the Transformation of American Dying in the 1960s
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History of Science and Medicine
First Advisor
Rogers, Naomi
Abstract
This dissertation argues that the 1960s were a turning point in end-of-life and after-death care in the United States. Across four chapters, I demonstrate how actors with different motivations and tactics ushered in a new era of attentive care for dying patients, their caregivers, and the dead. The first three chapters examine how grassroots activists, funeral directors, and medical professionals each campaigned to bring specialized yet accessible community-based care to dying people and the dead rather than a distanced professionalism that came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century. The fourth chapter analyzes the interplay between death management during the Vietnam War and mainstream death care at the end of the decade.Chapter one traces the rise of the funeral reform movement, whose white, middle-class membership denounced the consumer excesses of modern funerals. By reframing funeral directing as profit-driven rather than benevolent, reformers increased federal oversight, cremation rates, and funeral pre-planning but ultimately failed to account for broader racial politics of death. In chapter two, I examine how, in contrast to the accusations of funeral reformers, many African American funeral directors established a socially engaged business model. The chapter analyzes how funeral directors involved in the civil rights movement provided emergency medical services, safe passage, and political funerals, demonstrating a broad commitment to protecting African American life. The third chapter traces two experimental innovations for improving end-of-life care—hospice and psychedelic therapy. I argue that, despite their mixed legacies, hospice providers’ and psychedelic therapists’ attention to pain management as well as the social and physical contexts of care reshaped Americans’ expectations for the end-of-life period. The fourth chapter assesses how conventional American death care was exported to military mortuaries during the Vietnam War amid the changing landscape of death and dying stateside. Finally, in the epilogue, I assess the complicated legacy of death care activism into the 21st century. While efforts to radically transform end-of-life and death care were tempered by a lack of coalition building and entrenched racism, activists in this period nevertheless reshaped death and dying for decades to come. They expanded federal oversight of the death care industry, provided health care where there was none, and created specialized techniques and philosophies of care, demonstrating that dying people and the dead had a valued place in American life.
Recommended Citation
Streahle, Deborah, "Care Underground: Activists and the Transformation of American Dying in the 1960s" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1347.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1347
