(This column was first published Dec. 17, 2006, in the Tallahassee Democrat and was updated.)
There used to be a hospital at Florida A&M University. It was created because of racial segregation. It died because of racial integration.
But for 21 years, it was a beacon to Black residents of the Big Bend.
More than 50 years after its closing, it’s a Christmas Eve demise that still rankles some residents. Some worry that its mark on history has been forgotten.
Thousands of motorists stream past it at 1700 S. Adams St. without knowing it as anything but the Foote-Hilyer Administrative Center.
Nurses at the FAMU Hospital in Tallahassee in 1953
“The Black community felt the hospital belonged to them, and they were proud of it,” said retired registered nurse Edwina Stephens, who worked there. “Remembering that hospital is like remembering Egypt. It served so many people it should never be forgotten.”
The FAMU Hospital opened Dec. 10, 1950. It was a five-story brick building with 105 beds, built for $2 million and furnished with $500,000 of the latest medical equipment. It replaced a rudimentary medical “sanitorium” FAMU had operated since 1911.
FAMU presidents had lobbied the Legislature for money to build a full hospital since the 1930s, largely to help the school’s nursing program: Because of segregation, FAMU nursing students had to go to a Black hospital in Jacksonville for clinical training.
FAMU’s pleas fell on deaf ears until after World War II, when federal legislation mandated equal health care for all citizens – another of the many facets of the “separate but equal” doctrine employed to stave off full racial integration. State and federal money was spent nationwide to build schools, hospitals and other public facilities for Black people, rather than let them share existing white-used facilities. FAMU’s became one of about 120 Black hospitals then in existence.
“The state put up $2 million in 1950; that’s how bad they didn’t want Blacks to go to a hospital with whites,” said Nathaniel Wesley, a retired FAMU professor and veteran hospital administrator.
Though originally intended to serve FAMU students and nurse training, it soon expanded its mission. By 1962, it was serving 90,000 Black people in a six-county area. It employed 50 physicians – only four of whom were Black – and 75 nurses. It was hailed as a model hospital with 10 departments, including renowned divisions of pediatrics and obstetrics.
It was a training ground for Black nurses and administrators. It employed dozens of local African Americans in nonmedical positions. It held seminars for Black doctors from around the nation.
“When people talk about the closing of the hospital, they talk about the loss of access (for Black patients),” Wesley said. “But to me, it was just as important for employment, education and economics.”
Its heyday was short-lived.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 required all public facilities to be available to all citizens. Though true racial integration would be years in coming, the law was the death knell for the FAMU Hospital.
The state began reducing funding, arguing that the state shouldn’t operate a community hospital. The hospital’s white physicians began admitting Black patients to the white-run Tallahassee Memorial Hospital rather than run between two hospitals.
In 1966, the state Board of Regents announced it was phasing out all funding of FAMU Hospital. In 1967, then-city-operated TMH agreed to take it over, as long as the city and county funded any deficits.
FAMU Hospital limped along for another four years. But deteriorating conditions coupled with declining patient numbers crippled the hospital. On Dec. 23, 1971, with the hospital $253,000 in debt and housing only two patients, TMH Director M.T. Mustian announced the hospital would close the next day, Christmas Eve.
A nurse working at the former FAMU Hospital in this archived photo.
The two patients were transferred to TMH. All 57 FAMU Hospital employees were offered employment at TMH. The city and county each paid half the deficit.
There are those who blame FAMU Hospital’s demise on racism. They think the state unfairly reduced funding in its last years. They blame the city and TMH for not spending more to keep it open – especially considering that utility money paid by all residents, including African Americans, was a major source of TMH funding.
“That TMH and the city played a role in (the hospital’s) destruction is unconscionable,” said Tallahassee physician Ed Holifield, who is Black. “That hospital was the pride of the Black community.”
Mustian denies there was any racism. He said conditions dictated the closing: The building was in disrepair and the patient base was disappearing.
“Black and white had nothing to do with it,” Mustian said. “There were tremendous problems with the deterioration of the building that the state had permitted over the years. Sure, it was a source of pride to the Black community. But I don’t think they would have had pride in what they had under the conditions.”
Black residents anguished; local civil-rights organizations protested. Stephens said one Black employee had to be hospitalized after threatening suicide. Yet the closing was inevitable.
“It was psychologically and socially and politically disappointing to the Black community,” Stephens said. “(But) integration was the cause of the hospital closing. White people said: ‘OK, if you want to be integrated, come where we are; we’re not going where you are.'”
Today, only two traditional Black hospitals remain (in Washington, D.C., and Houston). There are two dozen “transitional hospitals,” which are white-founded hospitals now serving a predominantly Black clientele.
There is talk of erecting a historical marker at Foote-Hilyer Administrative Center, named for the FAMU hospital’s medical director (L.H.B. Foote) and original sanitorium superintendent (Virginia Hilyer).
But mostly there is hope its history will not be forgotten.
“A lot of Black people are ignorant to what that hospital represented,” Holifield said. “If you don’t know your history, you don’t know yourself.”
Gerald Ensley was a reporter and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1980 until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2018. The Tallahassee Democrat is publishing columns capturing Tallahassee’s history from Ensley’s vast archives each Sunday through 2024 in the Opinion section as part of the TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: FAMU hospital memories live on 50 years after closing | Gerald Ensley
