The cornerstone from what is the original ancestor to what is now Delta Health – The Medical Center will find a place of honor in the Plaza of the Mississippi State Medical Association headquarters.
The Colored King’s Daughters Hospital, founded in 1898 and operated until 1953, was the predecessor to what would then become the county general hospital as the county board of supervisors decided to build one hospital with equal beds for black and white patients.
During a recent Greenville City Council meeting, Dr. Hugh Gamble, whose grandfather was one of the operators of the CKDH made a presentation explaining the significance of the hospital’s history and where the cornerstone would reside. The council made the decision to purchase a $2,500 paver in the plaza in response.
The cornerstone’s path to recognition was a long and winding trail.
Dr. Mike Trotter, a retired surgeon who has spent the last years presenting to medical associations on medical history, started looking for the history of the CKDH back in 2017.
Finding no assembled history, he began to dig through newspaper archives, BOS meeting minutes and city council meeting minutes.
From those, he constructed somewhat of a timeline of the hospital’s history.
City council meeting minutes from 1898 show the formation of the Colored King’s Daughter Circle No. 4 in Greenville.
The CKDC would operate a small home until 1908 when the group purchased land on Alexander Street with the intention of building a hospital.
The BOS and city council took bids to build the structure and split the cost of $1,670.
At the time, the BOS funded the white hospital at the rate of $100 per month and spent $15 per month on the CKDH.
The CKDH operated regularly until the flood of 1927. Its recovery took time and in 1933 the BOS sued the operation but lost at every judicial level.
The CKDH entered into a leasing arrangement with Dr. Ware and Dr. Hugh Gamble of the Gamble Brothers Clinic.
Trotter said he believes this may have been one of the only black-owned and white-operated hospitals in the South. In most cases, the hospitals that served black patients were either white-owned and white-operated or black-owned and black-operated.
He also said the Gamble Clinic created a unique system of contracts with local farms that worked similarly to an HMO and allowed the hospital to serve patients who otherwise might not be able to pay for care.
In 1946, Congress passed the Hill-Burton Act which allotted federal grants for the construction of community-owned, non-profit hospitals. The act stipulated care could not be discriminatory and thus the BOS decided to build the predecessor to the current hospital in 1953.
The CKDH building remained intact until 1971 when the owner of the building demolished it for the construction of an apartment complex.
Trotter and his friend Steve Osso heard the cornerstone for the old building was still intact and laying in the weeds near the apartment complex.
They found it there near an air conditioning unit in decent shape.
The stone has since been cleaned and moved to the MSMA headquarters and is on display to the public in the new plaza there.
