Z 1713.000 Afro-American Hospital (Yazoo City, Miss.) Records

Biography/History:

The Afro-American Hospital of Yazoo City was established in 1928 to provide medical care for members of the Afro-American Sons and Daughters (Association), a state-wide fraternal insurance organization offering death and hospitalization benefits to its members. (The Association was founded in 1924 by Mr. Thomas Jefferson Huddleston of Yazoo City.) Although intended primarily for members' use, the hospital's services were available on a fee basis to people who did not belong to the Association. Throughout its history the Afro served black people not only from Yazoo City and the Delta, but from other parts of Mississippi and the South as well.

The first medical director of the Afro Hospital was Dr. Lloyd Tevis Miller, originally from Natchez, who had operated a clinic in Yazoo City for several years. Dr. Miller recruited Dr. Robert Elliot Fullilove and three registered nurses to complete his medical staff. Through the 1930s and 1940s, the hospital operated a nurses' school; its graduates were licensed as R.N.s by the state of Mississippi. Dr. Fullilove succeeded Dr. Miller as medical director of the hospital in 1951; in 1957 Dr. Cyril Walwyn became the hospital's last medical chief.

The hospital was fully utilized from the beginning. It fell into financial difficulties in the 1960s, however, because the Association (from whose coffers the hospital's operating expenses were met) did not adjust its membership and premium fee schedule upward to meet the rising cost of providing care at the hospital. In 1966, the State Hospital Board threatened to deny the Afro's application for license renewal until the Board's maintenance and safety specifications were met, but the Afro (and the Association) were unable to raise funds to correct the code deficiencies. In order to keep the facility open, the Yazoo County Board of Supervisors decided in 1967 to lease the hospital from the Association; they renovated and re-equipped it, and subsidized its operation until 1972 when a declining patient population made it unfeasible to do so any longer. (The recent integration of Yazoo City's King's Daughters Hospital, as well as hospitals in Vicksburg and Jackson, had drawn off much of the Afro's clientele.) The hospital reverted to the Association, and the hospital building, along with its contents, were sold at auction.

The Afro-American Hospital has a special place in Mississippi medical history as an exclusively black-owned and black-operated institution. Yet the patient register reproduced on this film is the only extant record of its existence: The medical and administrative records of the hospital were boxed up and left in the building when it was auctioned and their fate is unknown, and the State Hospital Care Commission discarded its files pertaining to the Afro when the hospital closed. The material upon which this brief historical statement is based was drawn from oral history interviews conducted by Barbara Allen, Scholar-in-Residence in Yazoo City, 1979–1980. Information regarding these interviews can be obtained from the Mississippi Committee for the Humanities, 3825 Ridgewood Road, Jackson, 39211.

Scope and Content:

This patient register provides the following information on each patient: case number, patient's name and address, date of admission, time of admission, room number, religion, sex, color, age, occupation, nationality, relative or friend and how related with address, telephone number, doctor in charge, admitting diagnosis, date of operation, condition on discharge, discharge diagnosis, number of days in hospital and date discharged.

Due to the confidential nature of these records, the following data was not included in the microfilm edition: patient's name, relative or friend and how related with address.

Series Identification:

1. Patient Register. 1931–1935. 1 volume. RESTRICTED.
2. Patient Register. 1931–1935. 1 roll 35 mm, positive microfilm (MF Roll # 36321).