Ezelle Sanford III is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in the history of modern medicine, public health, African American history, and medical sociology. His scholarship investigates how race and politics have shaped American healthcare systems, with particular attention to segregation, inequality, and grassroots activism. He is the author of Segregated Medicine: How Racial Politics Shaped American Healthcare (under contract with Columbia University Press, “Race, Health, and Inequality” Series). His publications include “Making and Managing Race and Health in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World” in Gender & History, “Reopening the United States: Black and Hispanic Workers Are Essential and Expendable Again” in American Journal of Public Health, “Colorblind Algorithms: Racism in the Era of COVID-19” in Journal of the National Medical Association, “The Myth of Black Immunity: Racialized Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic” in Black Perspectives, and “Civil Rights and Health Care: Remembering Simkins v. Cone” in Black Perspectives. He also authored “Save Homer G. Phillips and All Public Hospitals: St. Louis Grassroots Activism and the Plight of Urban Healthcare” in Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s and “Hospitals” in The World of Jim Crow America: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. His book reviews appear in leading journals such as The FASEB Journal, Journal of Southern History, and Technology and Culture. Sanford’s work extends beyond academia through public essays in National Geographic, Undark Magazine, Riverfront Times, and The Common Reader. Through his scholarship, teaching, and public engagement, he explores the intersections of race, medicine, and social justice, illuminating the enduring legacy of segregated healthcare and advocating for equity in medical and historical narratives.
Featured Publications:
Sanford, E., III, Jarvis, J., & Anglero, E. (2025, August 28). Queering institutional milestones in elite higher education: Queer perspectives on Princeton University and coeducation (1960–1980). Gender & History.
Sanford, E., III. (2023, December). We’ll fight it out here: A history of the ongoing struggle for health equity [Review of the book We’ll fight it out here: A history of the ongoing struggle for health equity, by D. Chanoff & L. W. Sullivan]. The FASEB J.