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The Price of Exclusion

A Conversation with Award-Winning Journalist Nicole Carr

Enjoy an evening with Nicole Carr, four-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, professor, and speaker, as she presents her landmark new book, The Price of Exclusion.

Through sweeping narrative and meticulous research, Carr uncovers the untold history of Black medical professionals who dedicated their lives to healing their communities while navigating a system designed to keep them out.

At the heart of the book is the remarkable story of Carr’s own great-grandfather, Dr. Lawrence St. Clair Ferguson — a Jamaican-born physician who served in World War I and trained during the Spanish Flu pandemic,  whose journey from colonial Jamaica to a racially divided America anchors a much larger reckoning with history. From the founding of America’s first four-year Black medical school to the devastation of the Flexner Report, Carr traces how institutions of power systematically dismantled Black medical excellence, and how that history lives in the disparities we see today.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Americans died at nearly twice the rate of white Americans. The Price of Exclusion asks the question we can no longer afford to ignore: How did we get here — and what will it take to finally change course?

At a moment when diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine are under political attack, this conversation is both timely and necessary. Learn more about the Author and book below.

For reasonable accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation, please allow at least seven (7) days notice.

About the Author

Nicole Carr is an award-winning investigative journalist, professor, and speaker based in Atlanta, GA. Her work has explored the intersection of race, politics, education and democracy. Carr’s reporting has appeared in numerous national and local outlets including ProPublica, PBS Frontline, The Brooklyn Public Library’s Borrowed and Banned podcast, The Emancipator, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, various television stations and networks, as well as public media across the country. She is a four-time Emmy award winning journalist. Her long-form narrative investigation into the anti-DEI movement earned a 2023 Sidney Award and her essay commentary on the democratizing force of the historic Black press won a 2025 award in Op-Ed from the American Society of Authors and Editors . Carr teaches journalism at Morehouse College. She is a proud graduate of Winston-Salem State and Syracuse Universities and is currently a Ph.D. student in the Humanities at Clark Atlanta University. Carr, her husband and three children reside in Georgia.
 

In Conversation with

Jummy Olabanji co-anchors News4 Today, the #1 morning news in Washington, D.C.A native of Fairfax County, Olabanji has spent most of her life in Virginia, graduating from Westfield High School in Chantilly and Virginia Tech. She earned a Master's degree in Communication and Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University. Olabanji started her journalism career as an intern for NBC4. She has also worked for stations in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and New York City.She has been honored for her work with two national Edward R. Murrow Awards for breaking news anchor coverage, two Virginia Associated Press Awards and eight EMMY Awards.Olabanji is an advocate for organ donation and sits on the Board of Directors of the National Kidney Foundation. She is also a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, The Links, Incorporated, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Olabanji lives with her husband and their baby daughter in Washington, D.C.

About the Book

From award-winning journalist Nicole Carr comes a landmark narrative revealing the untold history of Black medical professionals who have long fought to heal their communities—while confronting a system built to exclude them.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Americans died at nearly twice the rate of their white counterparts—a disparity rooted not only in access to care but in a long history of exclusion, exploitation, and systemic racism. How did we get here, and why, despite generations of Black medical excellence, do these inequities persist? In The Price of Exclusion, journalist Nicole Carr uncovers that history and its urgent consequences, exposing the hidden toll of America’s refusal to value Black doctors and their patients.

At the center is the extraordinary life of Carr’s great-grandfather, Dr. Lawrence St. Clair Ferguson, a Jamaican-born physician who served in World War I and attended medical school during the Spanish Flu pandemic. His journey from colonial Jamaica to a racially divided America provides both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping history of how Black physicians persevered despite segregation, erasure, and relentless barriers to practice.

Through vivid storytelling and meticulous research, Carr resurrects the lives of pioneers who transformed medicine against impossible odds. From America’s first four-year medical school located at a historically Black college in North Carolina to the generations of Black physicians whose contributions were pushed aside by institutions of power, Carr shows how these figures were not only doctors but also advocates and innovators whose work reshaped public health and opened doors for those who followed.

Carr also reveals the systemic campaigns that actively disempowered Black doctors, from the American Medical Association’s exclusionary policies to the devastating closures of Black medical schools after the Flexner Report. That legacy fuels today’s shortage of Black medical professionals and the lingering distrust in medicine that continues to cost lives.

Bold, moving, and essential, The Price of Exclusion is both a necessary history and a testament to the resilience of Black medical pioneers past and present. At a moment when diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine are under political attack, Carr forces us to reckon with the past while imagining a future where healthcare truly values every single life.

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