Claim:   Photograph shows a KKK member being treated by an all-black emergency room staff.

Status:   False.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2005]

He ain't gonna make it!

Origins:   One might think of this image, which supposedly captures a Ku Klux Klan member (presumably the victim of a trauma) being treated by an all-black emergency room staff, as the flipside of the familiar racial legends that falsely proclaimed singer Bessie Smith and physician Charles Drew both died from treatable injuries sustained in automobile accidents because they had been refused treatment at "whites-only" hospitals.

This photo appeared to be a posed or fabricated image intended as ironic or humorous political commentary, and the crease down the middle of the image suggested a picture scanned from another source, such as a magazine. (Despite many viewer's mistaking it for such, this image is not a screen capture taken from an episode of the popular television hospital drama ER, nor is the doctor shown in the center of the picture actor Eriq LaSalle, who portrayed surgeon Dr. Peter Benton in that series.)

Evidently this assessment was correct, as the source of the picture (as well as the others displayed below) was Large magazine's "For people who think bigger than they are" ad campaign:




Last updated:   13 June 2005

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