Vision(s) of Progress: Closing Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, MO

The UNC Department of Anthropology invites you to its Colloquium Event:

Ezelle Sanford III – Doctoral Candidate, History of Science, Princeton University

Abstract: Following a more than decade-long battle, in August of 1979 the Mayor of St. Louis, the Honorable James Conway, mandated the closure of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital. A relic of Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” era, the hospital served the black residents of the St. Louis region while training the largest number of black physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals in the nation. Using the hospital’s closure as a case study I will examine how various entities struggled to claim and define the symbolic meaning of the facility. More importantly, the hospital’s closure invited disparate actors to ponder the meaning of “progress:” racial progress, modernization of regional health facilities, an urban utopian vision for St. Louis’s future. In the midst of impending closure the stakes were high as unlikely interracial alliances and intraracial disagreements continued to shape and reshape the meaning and relevance of the hospital.

Light refreshments will be served.

Sponsored by the Health, Medicine, and Humanity Concentration