Two weeks ago today, I read one of Tangie Woods’ informative blog posts (https://tangietwoods.blog/2025/06/30/dr-william-b-sawyer-founder-of-first-hospital-for-black-americans-miami-fl/).

Tangie’s blog was about the man who, in 1920, started the first hospital for black people in Miami. After reading her post, I wanted to find out more about the first hospital for blacks in my area.

You just never know where a little research is going to take you. I started out looking for the history of Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte and in the process I learned about a train wreck in 1911, the murder by a mob in 1913, and a woman who was instrumental in the establishment of the hospital. The hospital and that July 17, 1911, train wreck are connected, so I decided to write about both during this anniversary week.

I was aware of Good Samaritan Hospital because it was still in existence when I was growing up. It makes me feel ancient to remember that when I was born there was still racial segregation in medical care.

Good Samaritan Hospital, or “Good Sam” as it was affectionately called, was built in Charlotte in 1891 after the project was spearheaded by the congregation of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. The first hospital for white people in Charlotte, St. Peter’s Hospital, was built in 1876.

I learned much from an online article written by Brandon Lunsford (https://charlottemuseum.org/learn/articles/good-samaritan-hospital/). Lunsford is the archivist for Johnson C. Smith University.

In the beginning, Good Samaritan Hospital had 20 beds. A School of Nursing was established there in 1903, which trained nurses for the next 50 years.

With the help of the Duke Foundation and the Colored Sunday School Union, it more than doubled in size in 1925. A major expansion was completed in 1937, bringing the bed count to 100.

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Good Samaritan Hospital’s response to a train wreck

The importance of Good Samaritan being the only hospital to serve black people in North Carolina was brought to the forefront on July 17, 1911, when a freight train and a passenger train collided head-on near Hamlet, North Carolina, some 75 miles east of Charlotte.

Brandon Lunsford’s article indicates that 83 black patients were brought from the train wreck to Good Samaritan Hospital. Eighty of the 83 survived their injuries. The way in which medical care was given to the victims of the train wreck raised Good Samaritan’s reputation.

I found conflicting information about the number of people injured in the train wreck. Brandon Lunsford reports that 83 black passengers (and I’m thinking there were probably railway employees included in that number transported to Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte), while another online article (https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/news/108231/pair-of-researchers-seeking-more-information-on-train-wreck-from-1111-years-ago) says that 25 people were injured.

(I don’t have the time right now to take a deep dive into that discrepancy. It could be something as simple as a typographical error in the resource material used for either article. I hope it is not because so many of those injured were black people. I couldn’t help but wonder if the early newspaper accounts only reported the number of white people injured. I’ll leave it to someone else to go down that rabbit hole.)

Regardless of the total number injured, all of the black people injured in the accident had to be transported 75 miles to Charlotte to the only hospital serving black patients in the North Carolina, and Good Samaritan Hospital should be remembered and celebrated for that.

The Richmond County, NC newspaper article cited above states, “Many of the injured were members of St. Joseph’s AME Church. They were located in an inferior, wooden passenger train [car] due to segregation laws at the time.”

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Back to the history of Good Samaritan Hospital

Good Samaritan Hospital was in the news again on August 26, 1913. Brandon Lunsford’s article reports the following: “A mob of about thirty-five armed men stormed the hospital and captured a black man named Joe McNeely, who was arrested five days earlier for the shooting of Charlotte policeman L.L. Wilson. McNeely, who was also shot and recovering at Good Samaritan, was dragged out into the street by the angry mob, shot and mortally wounded. No one was ever convicted for McNeely’s death, and the crime remains an ugly mark on Charlotte’s history.” (That is another piece of local history I was not aware of.)

The Episcopal churches in Charlotte continued to support and take administrative responsibilities for Good Samaritan Hospital in to the 1950s, but the financial burden was making that increasingly difficult.

In 1961, the City of Charlotte and Charlotte Memorial Hospital took ownership of Good Samaritan. Its name was changed to Charlotte Community Hospital. It closed in 1982 and became the Magnolias Rest Home.

To make land available for the construction of Bank of America Stadium (formerly, Ericsson Stadium), the former Good Samaritan Hospital was demolished in 1996.

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Good Samaritan Hospital Historical Marker

The Richmond County Daily Journal article cited above includes a photograph of the historical marker outside Bank of America Stadium in downtown Charlotte. It reads as follows: “Good Samaritan Hospital (1891-1961) Site of the first independent private hospital in North Carolina built exclusively for African-Americans. Established by Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. One of the oldest black hospitals then in operation in the U.S.”

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Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes?

Who was Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes and why am I just now hearing about her?

You’ll have to read my blog post scheduled for tomorrow to find out who she was.

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Hurricane Helene Update

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has changed how it is reporting road closures on its website, so my weekly updates will change accordingly. At least, I could not find the detail presented in quite the same way as it was in the past. Also, there was lots of flooding in the northern piedmont and eastern parts of the state due to Tropical Storm Chantal last week.

As of Friday, 37 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene and 50 had limited access. Five road were reopened last week.

Of course, I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge is still just two lanes with a 35-mph speed limit, and most of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is still closed.

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Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet