As I listened to a previous oral history from last semester, Charlotte Memorial Hospital was mentioned. I chose to discuss this topic because I was curious about the evolution of medicine in Charlotte over the years. Memorial Hospital opened in Dilworth in October of 1940, named a memorial to commemorate the North Carolinians who died in World War I. It started off having departments in internal medicine, general practice, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedics, urology, psychiatry, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, pathology, anesthesia and dentistry. The hospital was rumored to have a great deal of specialists who wanted to contribute efforts during WWII. The doctors did make an effort to help during the war, and its first patients were sixty six patients from St. Peters Hospital when that hospital shut down.  St. Peters set a precedent to having the hospital being medically and spiritually healing so there was a chapel built in Memorial Hospital. After moving in new patients and building the hospital completely, chapel and all, board member George Snyder remarked, "we constructed the hospital, moved the equipment, and then realized we had almost no money left to run the hospital. No one had thought about that" (Shinn, 81).

           By the end of 1941, resources from the hospital were being drained by help in the war effort. Memorial Hospital ran short on food, medicine, supplies and health care providers. Even though this was the case, no one was turned down by Memorial Hospital, no matter what ethnicity or financial situation. The hospital competed with the other surrounding hospitals for paying customers; when the hospital acquired paying customers they tended to overcharge in order to compensate for the non-paying customers who were the bulk of their patients. Due to this, people were going to other hospitals instead. 

Though the hospital was known to take in a more diverse population of patients, it mainly only serviced Black patients who had illnesses or needs that couldn’t be treated at the Good Samaritan Hospital, the Black only hospital during this period. A policy was passed that the hospital would accept Black patients who needed lifesaving services (Elder, 2001). Those needs included things like, people who needed an iron lung to breathe or patients with polio. During the polio epidemic, the hospital asked for increased funding since they took in more non-paying patients but were denied; their finanicial woes continued. However, in 1946 the Hill-Burton Act was passed, requiring federal money to go towards expanding hospitals; the hospital received a grant of $212,520. 

         When the hospital opened, it allowed Black patients, but did not allow for Black physicians. They allowed Black students to volunteer at the hospital, who would do certain tasks like fill salt and pepper shakers(Mitchell, 2002). However in 1951 Dr. Emery L Rann, an African-American, applied for membership of the Mecklenburg County Medical Society. Though he was denied, it was a catalyst to desegregate hospitals in Charlotte. In 1954, Mecklenburg County Medical Society voted to remove barriers to black physicians. In 1960, resolutions were made to have 100-125 beds for Black patients in a new wing, train Black and White paramedics, and to integrate qualified Black physicians.  Later that year they proposed 14 beds should be designated for Black patients who were critically ill. By 1961, 233 beds in a new wing  were available for the new wing and in 1962 they had 19 Black patients in the wing, the highest number they'd had in the institutions history. It took until 1965  to completely desegregate hospitals and during taht time the amount of patients admitted into Memorial tripled. Good Samaritan Hospital was turned over to the city of charlotte. There had not been much racial tension in Charlotte to begin with, so desegregation did not cause much uproar. It did, however, lead to Good Samaritan Hospital being closed down as Charlotte Memorial hospital expanded and there wasn’t a need for both hospitals. In 1982,

       Charlotte Memorial adopted the tree of life symbol to represent hope and rejuvenation. The hospital served patients up until 1990, when the name of the hospital was changed to Carolinas Medical Center (CMC), as it is named today and is still in operation (Taylor, 2006).

Sources:

Transcript, Interview with Thereasea Elder, May 9, 2001,  Melinda, Desmarais, Atkins Library.  Online: https://library.uncc.edu/interview/ohel0055

Transcript, Martha P. Mitchell Oral History Interview I, March 3, 2002, by Melinda Desmarais, Atkins Library. Online: http://nsv.uncc.edu/interview/ohmi0277

Taylor, Margaret, and Memory Mitchell. "Hospitals." NCpedia Home Page. N.p., Jan. 2006. Web. 04 May 2016.

http://www.carolinashealthcare.org/our-history

Shinn, John. A Great, Public Compassion: The Story Of Charlotte Memorial Hospital. Charlotte: UNC Charlotte, 2002. Print.

Credits for photos above:

http://www.cmhpf.org/photogallery/29/CharMemHosp.jpg

http://digitalcollections.uncc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15483coll1/id/1451/rec/5

http://digitalcollections.uncc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15483coll1/id/1449