Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital

In 1928, Mississippi's first hospital for black Mississippians - the Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital - opened in Yazoo City. The hospital, which offered both major and minor surgery, was a leading health care supplier for blacks in Mississippi during segregation, a time in history where they had nowhere else to go.

The hospital was founded by Thomas J. Huddleston, Sr., a prosperous black entrepreneur and advocate of Booker T. Washington's self-help philosophy. Huddleston was the grandfather of Mike Espy who is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and former United States Secretary of Agriculture, and who was himself born at the hospital.

In 1924, Huddleston organized the Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a fraternal organization, to build and operate the hospital. The society became one of the leading black voluntary associations in the state. Organized in 1924, it had 35,000 members by the 1930s and hundreds of lodges.

Not only did the hospital have a full-service operating room and delivery room, the campus also included a training school for nurses. Health care was provided at low cost to the patients. The hospital had a low death rate compared to other hospitals that served blacks in the South during the period.

It ceased operation in 1966 as a fraternal entity after years of increasingly burdensome regulation, competitive pressure from government and third-party health care alternatives, and the migration of younger dues-paying blacks to the North. The Afro-American Sons and Daughters disbanded during the same period. The county government continued to run the hospital until 1972 when it finally closed its doors.

Restoration

In 2004, the Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital Foundation was formed to save and preserve the hospital as an Afro-American history museum and hall of fame dedicated to black health professionals - a project estimated at about $1.6 million. In 2005, the foundation was awarded a $300,000 grant with a $60,000 match toward the restoration. The foundation announced in December 2007 that it has raised almost all of the $60,000 match and that initial restoration work on the hospital is expected to begin by spring of 2008. The Mississippi Department of History and Archives said that the area of the building that needs the most attention is the roof and that vandalism has been an issue at the old building. The agency also said that the building itself is very sturdy, that it was good construction.

References

* [http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071209/NEWS/712090360/1002/NEWS01 The Clarion-Ledger:Work on historic hospital set for '08]

*David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, David T. Beito, "'Let Down Your Bucket Where You Are:' The Afro-American Hospital and Black Health Care in Mississippi, 1924-1966," "Social Science History" 30:4 (Winter 2006), 551-69.