The award-winning documentary, Power to Heal, tells how civil rights activists, the federal government, and medical professionals leveraged Medicare funding to bring down segregation, opening the door to hospitals, doctors and medical schools for Black Americans and other minorities in both the North and South. The film begins by revealing the culture of segregated health care and the real perils it unleashed in black communities. It follows a chronological arc, beginning with federal legislation (the Hill–Burton Act of 1946) that facilitated the spread of segregated hospitals following World War II just as black doctors intensified their efforts to end racial discrimination.
