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Hale Infirmary

African-American history in Montgomery, AlabamaDefunct hospitals in AlabamaHistorically black hospitals in the United StatesPublic hospitals in the United States
Hale infirmary 1919
Hale infirmary 1919

Hale Infirmary (also Hale's Infirmary) was a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, for African American citizens during a time of segregation. It was the first such hospital in the city; founded in 1890 by Dr. Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette, it was in operation until 1958. The hospital was founded during the Black Hospital Movement, a nation-wide development of efforts that aimed to provide better medical care to Black citizens as well as training opportunities for doctors and nurses of color. At the time, there were 25 such hospitals in Alabama, and Hale's was the first in Montgomery. Its founder, Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette (1852? - 1897), had graduated from Hampton University in Virginia and from the medical school at the University of Buffalo (where he was the second Black graduate). In 1883, Booker T. Washington (his classmate at Hampton) had asked him to come to Montgomery, and he was one of the first Black doctors to be licensed in the state. He became the personal doctor to Washington. He also ran a pharmacy and had an office on Dexter Avenue, where he had a three-story office building built for him.Dorsette's father in law, James Hale, was the richest Black man in Montgomery. He donated the land for the hospital, and money was raised for the building by a white women's social organization. The hospital was a two-story building with sixty beds, an operating room, and an isolation ward. It cost $7,000 to build, had plumbing throughout and bathrooms for men and women with hot and cold running water.Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, the first woman licensed to practice medicine in the state, was tutored in Hale Infirmary. In 1919, the lynching of Willie Temple took place in the hospital: he was murdered by a white mob while being treated for a gunshot wound. Later, Martin Luther King Jr. helped raise funds for the hospital. David Henry Scott, a doctor from Montgomery who had studied medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashvile, operated at the hospital, and for a while was the head of the hospital.

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Hale Infirmary
Citadel Street, Montgomery

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N 32.372777777778 ° E -86.298333333333 °
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Citadel Street

Citadel Street
36130 Montgomery
Alabama, United States
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Hale infirmary 1919
Hale infirmary 1919
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Gerald–Dowdell House
Gerald–Dowdell House

The Gerald–Dowdell House, in Montgomery, Alabama, was built c.1854. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.It was built by Perley and Camilla (Sanford) Buckley Gerald. Perley Gerald, a native of New York, moved to Alabama in 1829, first settling in Mobile before moving to the Montgomery area to trade with the Creek Indians. During the Gold Rush of 1849, Gerald went west and made a fortune trading with the miners. He later married Camilla Sanford Buckley, whose brother was General John Williams Sanford of Georgia and whose nephew was Colonel J.W.A. Sanford, Jr., who designed the State flag. According to local tradition, Herman Arnold, conductor of the orchestra at the Montgomery Theater, was renting the front corner room of the house in 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War. Arnold arranged “Dixie” as a march and led the Montgomery Brass Band in the inaugural parade. Another local inhabitant was Robert T. Simpson, a Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who lived in the building from 1940 to 1949. The building is within walking distance of several key sites in the civil rights movement, including Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King once served as pastor. The Gerald–Dowdell House is one of the few large raised cottages remaining in Montgomery, and has undergone substantial rehabilitation as part of its conversion for use as a law office for the firm of Wilkerson & Bryan, P.C. In 2000, construction was completed on a new building connected to the historic structure through what was once an enclosed back porch. The addition was designed to convey the image of a carriage house, in keeping with the historic nature of the site.