Mercy Hospital provided critical healthcare not only to African-Americans in Wilson County, but those in surrounding counties as well.
Robert B. Smith, a prominent Black farmer near Walstonburg, Greene County, came to Wilson for treatment of his kidney disease. He died at Mercy on 21 September 1935.
Wilson Daily Times, 2 October 1935.
Rev. Rufus A. Horton performed Smith’s funeral service. Lula Smith of 630 Suggs Street was informant for the death certificate.
J.D. Reid, principal of the Colored Graded School, was also secretary/treasurer of Wilson Hospital and Tubercular Home (later known as Mercy Hospital) and its chief fundraiser. The institution was meant to encompass two sites — an intown hospital and a “tubercular home” on a farm just outside of Wilson. More about the latter in a future post.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 December 1913.
Wilson Daily Times, 23 November 1913.
[The land was surely purchased from Dr. Frank S. Hargrave, not W.S., and I intend to figure out exactly where it was.]
[Update, 20 February 2023: actually, per deed, Samuel H. Vick sold the hospital the acreage for $5000 in November 1913. He had purchased it several years earlier.]
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Wilson Daily Times, 6 August 1949.
The Wilson County chapter of the American Cancer Society sent Mercy Hospital nurse Sylvia Daniels to attend a training course in cancer nursing at Durham’s North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University.)
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Hill’s Wilson, N.C., City Directory (1947).
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 6 August 1932.
Benjamin F. Jordan of First Missionary Baptist Church submitted to the paper a tribute to tobacconist R.P. Watson on behalf of the Negro Ministerial Alliance of Wilson. Watson had been a benefactor of Mercy Hospital.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 March 1915.
In March 1915, a committee of white Wilson residents appealed to the North Carolina General Assembly for annual funds for the Wilson Hospital and Tubercular Home, the precursor to Mercy Hospital.
Wilson Daily Times, 22 February 1936.
After faltering in the 1920s, Wilson’s Black hospital reorganized and reopened as non-profit Mercy Hospital in 1930. Carolina General Hospital’s Dr. Leland V. Grady was instrumental in guiding Mercy’s administrators through the hospital’s earliest years, and William Hines and Camillus L. Darden penned tributes to him at his death.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 December 1930.
After struggling financially for many years, in 1930 the African-American hospital on East Green Street reopened as non-profit Mercy Hospital, the name by which it is best known, with support from the Duke Foundation and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Though Mercy did not admit white patients, it had an integrated Board of Trustees. Its president and vice-president were white, but William Hines, secretary/treasurer, retained his duties as chief hospital administrator.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 December 1916.
A few years after it opened, friends of the Wilson Colored Hospital (later known as Mercy) held a pop-up shop of sorts in the Odd Fellows Hall on East Nash Street to raise money for indigent tuberculosis patients. On offer, clothing, but mostly undoubtedly delicious food — barbecue, chicken salad, oysters, sausages, sandwiches, sweets and ice cream.
Unlike this benefit in 1930, the program below was aimed at an African-American audience.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 December 1946.
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