African Americans

Health Care For the First Freedpeople

Here’s a great post about the first US sponsored hospital for African Americans from Jill L. Newmark, exhibition specialist in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.

On a parcel of swampy land in northwest Washington, D.C. bounded by 12th, 13th, R and S Streets N.W., a tented camp and hospital once stood that served thousands of escaped slaves and black soldiers during the American Civil War. Known as Contraband Camp, it contained one of the few hospitals that treated blacks in Washington, D.C. during the war and whose staff, including nurses and surgeons, were largely African American.

Read more: Contraband Hospital, 1862-1863: Health Care For the First Freedpeople