America's Black Hospital Movement: Book Reading & Performance
Date and Time
The Arts and Humanities Initiative at HMS and Countway Library invite you to celebrate the release of an important new book:
The Houston Negro Hospital: The Untold Legacy of Riverside General by Carlton Houston
Featuring a special performance by violinist Grant Houston
At the height of racial and political tensions in early twentieth-century Houston, two unlikely figures became allies. Dr. William M. Drake, a pioneering surgeon and Black community leader, and Joseph Cullinan, a white oil magnate and founder of the company that became TEXACO, united in a desperate effort to save a hospital that symbolized hope. The Houston Negro Hospital was born from America's Black hospital movement. Dedicated on Juneteenth 1926, it embodied a bold experiment to bring dignity and health care access to a community that was systematically denied both in the Jim Crow South.
Journalist and storyteller Carlton Houston—whose ancestors played a role in this remarkable heritage- reveals the untold, human drama behind the institution that would become Riverside General. Discover the vision, conflict, and resilience that shaped a century of health care through the struggle of those determined to save lives.
