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Flint-Goodridge Hospital provided medical care for people of color [1]

['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-04-08  

Flint-Goodridge Hospital was founded by Black women for Black people.

In the late 1800s, the death rate for Black New Orleanians was high (42.4 per 1,000 compared to 23.8 per 1,100 white people), according to the University of Chicago’s Journal of African American History. The only medical care available to Black people was in Charity Hospital’s “Colored Ward.”

Seeing the need for a Black hospital, the Phyllis Wheatley Club, led by Sylvanie F. Williams, started the Phyllis Wheatley Sanitarium and Training School for Negro Nurses in 1896. The club eventually turned hospital administration over to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Five years later, a donation from cotton manufacturer John Flint was used to purchase property at 1566 Canal St., for the Flint Medical College of New Orleans University. Caroline Mudge donated money to buy an adjacent lot, which in honor of her mother became Sarah Goodridge Hospital. In 1915, the college merged with the hospital to form Flint-Goodridge.

Dillard University took over the hospital in 1929, and built a new building in 1932 at 2425 Louisiana Ave. Despite financial woes, Flint-Goodridge served patients well. Through 20 years, the hospital increased Black people’s access to health care and tackled Black public health issues.

In 1983, a group of 47 Black doctors, two dentists and one pharmacist tried to buy

Flint-Goodridge, according to the Creole Genealogical and Historical Association (CreoleGen). Instead, the hospital was sold to National Medical Enterprises for $1.8 million, and closed in 1985. The building, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, is now Flint-Goodridge Apartments.

“Over its 88 years, Flint-Goodridge Hospital nobly fulfilled its mission as a place where medical care could be assured to people of color,” the CreoleGen article states, “where men and women of color could freely pursue the healing arts, and where stereotypes as to the unworthiness and ineptitude of the colored race could be dispelled.”

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