Author and historian John A. Wright will be the honoree and guest speaker for “Homer G. Phillips and the Ville: Celebrating the Legacy,” the 20th annual Homer G. Phillips Public Health Lecture Series at Washington University St. Louis. It takes place Friday, October 23 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center, 320 South Euclid Ave.
Wright, a Fulbright Scholar and former Ville resident, has written books about the hospital, the Ville neighborhood and disappearing black communities in St. Louis in his Black America Series.
This year’s Homer G. Phillips lecture has the backdrop of baby-snatching and adoption accusations that played out in the media. City and federal investigators found no basis for the claims, but only after the hospital’s otherwise impeccable reputation for training top-notch African-American physicians and nurses had been tainted.
“The allegations of a baby-stealing plot at Homer G. Phillips Hospital was widely circulated without the benefits of critical fact checks and journalistic balance,” said Will Ross, M.D., assistant dean for Diversity at Washington University School of Medicine, and organizer of the lecture series.
“Perhaps the fact that the alleged ‘scandal’ occurred at an African-American public hospital was a major factor in the widespread adoption of the story, validating the biases we harbor about the quality of care provided at under-resourced public hospitals, especially those in African-American neighborhoods.”
During segregation, Homer G. Phillips was St. Louis’ only hospital for African Americans and one of only a few hospitals to train black doctors and nurses. It opened in 1937 and served the city’s black community until its controversial closure in 1979.
“Make no mistake, this story was about race and racial stereotypes,” Ross said. “Despite the fact the story was later disproven, the litany of negative media reports resulted in immeasurable damage to the reputation of one of the greatest African-American hospitals in the history of America and an icon in the African American community in St. Louis.”
To many, the allegations are a personal affront.
“The story was a personal insult to the living physicians and nurses who trained and worked at Homer G. and the legends of Homer G. Phillips we have honored in the past,” Ross said. “For this reason, we are honoring Dr. Wright, who has memorialized the history of the hospital and the Ville neighborhood in several of his books. As a people, we must be involved in writing our own history.”
Cocktails begin at 6 p.m. Friday, October 23, with the dinner at 6:30 and the lecture at 7:30 p.m. at the Eric P. Newman Education Center, 320 South Euclid Ave. Free parking is available on surface lots and validated parking is available in the North Garage, across the street from the Center for Advanced Medicine Building or the Metro garage.
The event is free open to the public. RSVP to Michelle Patterson at 314-362-6854 or mpatterson@wustl.edu.
