Journal of Urban History 2010 Kirouac Fram 594 616

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DOI: 10.1177/0096144210365455
2010 36: 594 originally published online 19 April 2010 Journal of Urban History
Jaclyn Kirouac-Fram
Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, 1976-1984
''To Serve the Community Best'': Reconsidering Black Politics in the Struggle to Save
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Journal of Urban History
36(5) 594 616
2010 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0096144210365455
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To Serve the Community
Best: Reconsidering Black
Politics in the Struggle to
Save Homer G. Phillips
Hospital in St. Louis,
1976-1984
Jaclyn Kirouac-Fram
1
Abstract
The move to consolidate, and eventually to close, Homer G. Phillips Hospital sparked a major
uprising in St. Louis, Missouri, during the years 1976 through 1984. This article explores the
struggle in St. Louiss black community to keep open, and later to reopen, Homer G. Phillips
Hospital from a vantage point that demonstrates the diversity of opinion surrounding the
struggle. For many black St. Louis residents, the physical space of Homer G. Phillips Hospital was
a metaphor for identity, a manifestation of citizenship rights, and a means of delineating a territory
of shared histories, understandings, and values. For others, it was a relic of segregation and racism.
In seeking to understand the diversity of public reaction, this article addresses class antagonism,
examines the varied and divergent motivations for eliminating or maintaining services at the
hospital, and reconsiders the discourse of black politics. It is a decisive illustration of how
the national twin crises of deindustrialization and privatization affected a heterogeneous black
community.
Keywords
African American, urban space, St. Louis, class, health care
Hospitals are about the only thing that the people have left as far as city service is concerned.
Those were the sentiments of Benjamin L. Goins, license collector for the city of St. Louis in
April 1976. Earlier that month, the citys budget director had proposed the elimination of acute
and long-term care services at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, a municipal hospital located on the
heavily black north side of St. Louis, as part of a larger plan to bridge a $10 million budget gap
for the 1976-1977 fiscal year.
1
The plan proposed consolidating the citys municipal acute and
long-term care services at City Hospital #1, the citys other municipal hospital, which was located
in a more southern, majority-white section of the city. The Citywide Coalition to Save All City
1
Saint Louis University, Missouri
Corresponding Author:
Jaclyn Kirouac-Fram, Department of American Studies, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108
Email: jkirouac@slu.edu
at EASTERN CONN STATE UNIV LIB on August 11, 2014 juh.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Kirouac-Fram 595
Hospitals, a grassroots group of concerned north side residents and hospital employees, held its
first large-scale meeting to hear from the community in June of that year. Saint Louis University
urban affairs professor Ernest Calloway led off the meeting by summarizing, The private
hospitals have moved out. Even before that our doctors moved out of the city. We are down to
the public health and hospital services. I dont think we can afford to have the hospitals go.
2

Later that year, when the only private hospital remaining on the north side closed its doors to
move to a suburban county location, Calloway wrote, Without Homer G., north St. Louis will
become a health desert.
3
Homer G. Phillips Hospital, in addition to serving the health needs of the majority of St. Louiss
poor black residents, was a symbol of pride for the surrounding community. Since it opened in
1937 as the citys municipal hospital for black patients, Phillips Hospital had been a nationally
recognized and revered training hospital for black physicians and nurses, uplifting generations of
black community leaders. By 1962, 55 percent of all black medical specialists in the United States
had been trained at Phillips Hospital, and the Homer G. Phillips nursing school was the largest
producer of black registered nurses in the world (see Figure 1). At that time, there was no sizable
black community in the United States that was not served by at least one Homer G. Phillips
trained doctor.
4
Desegregated in the mid-1950s, the hospital was a conflicted symbol of both
segregation and self-improvement for black St. Louisans.
The move to consolidate, and eventually to close, Homer G. Phillips Hospital sparked a
major uprising in St. Louis during the years 1976 through 1984. This article explores the struggle
Figure 1.
Note: Photo of the class of 1965, Homer G. Phillips Hospital School of Nursing (Courtesy of the Western Historical
Manuscript Collection).
596 Journal of Urban History 36(5)
in St. Louiss black community to keep open, and later to reopen, Homer G. Phillips Hospital
from a vantage point that demonstrates the diversity of opinion surrounding the struggle. It is
not my intention to judge whether the local St. Louis government was correct in choosing to
close the hospital. Instead, I am seeking to contextualize and understand the diversity of public
reaction to the threat of its closure and to its eventual shuttering. Rather than presuming the
existence of a single black community, I approach these events in a manner that addresses class
antagonism, examines the multivalent motivations for eliminating or maintaining services at the
hospital, and reconsiders the discourse of black politics.
5
To interpret the scope of the conflict that erupted in 1979 in response to the consolidation
announcement, I propose that the physical space of Homer G. Phillips Hospital was tied to ideo-
logical space, serving as a metaphor for identity, a manifestation of citizenship rights, and a means
of delineating a territory of shared histories, understandings, and values. Because the hospital
denoted a range of meanings for a diversity of individuals, threats of its impending closure pre-
cipitated a complex, divisive struggle whose participants articulated divergent but complimentary
desires in retaining a full range of services at Phillips Hospital. Protesters faced opposition from
budget-conscious city leaders, both black and white; the majority of the citys white population;
and middle- and upper-class black St. Louisans for whom Homer G. Phillips Hospital was a relic
of segregation and racism. This article attempts to document and understand the strivings of north
side residents and their allies to preserve heritage, follow a moral imperative to care for the sick
and poor, and secure health care as an element of full national citizenship, while also recognizing
the validity of competing motivations to close the hospital.
6
By providing the context and the
analysis through which to understand a significant conflict of which scant official documentation
exists, this article offers a decisive illustration of how the national twin crises of deindustrializa-
tion and privatization affected a heterogeneous black community.
7
To understand the significance of the eight-year Homer G. Phillips Hospital struggle, one must
first understand the particular history of segregation and black institutions in St. Louis. Although
segregation in St. Louis was applied less evenly than in most Southern cities, blacks living in
St. Louis in the first half of the twentieth century labored under strict school and residential
segregation, employment discrimination, and harassment. By midcentury, St. Louis had emerged
as one of the most residentially segregated cities in America. Between 1900 and 1950, the central
corridor of St. Louis became home to a concentration of black families as white families moved
to the urban periphery or beyond to the suburbs.
8
Homer G. Phillips Hospital opened in 1937 in the Ville neighborhood of North St. Louis
one of the few areas where black families could purchase homes and the schools were within
walking distance. At that time, the Ville was home to an emerging black middle class and the
only high school in St. Louis that admitted black students; by 1925, the neighborhood offered
educational opportunities from grade school through college.
9
For their own protection, pride,
and advancement, black St. Louisans in the first half of the century created a host of civic institu-
tions, organizations, houses of worship, and social networks in which to navigate their path
toward greater independence.
10
Black leadership formed the St. Louis chapter of the Urban
League, along with the local branch of the NAACP and the Association of Colored Womens
Clubs. St. Louiss black-owned newspapers offered communication networks among diverse
groups and organizations, and Poro Beauty College and Lincoln Law School, both located in the
Ville, turned out skilled professionals.
11
Still, the founding of a black hospital in segregated St. Louis was a divisive and controversial
issue that rooted Phillips Hospital in conditions of struggle from its inception. Prior to 1914,
blacks had few health care options; the citys one public hospital, City Hospital #1, admitted black
patients to a damp basement level but prevented black physicians from practicing there. That year,
the city purchased a small abandoned building, made the requisite renovations, dubbed it City
Kirouac-Fram 597
Hospital #2, and opened it to the black population (see Figure 2). With only 177 beds, however,
this building was grossly inadequate to serve the burgeoning St. Louis black community. In 1919,
St. Louis resident and attorney Homer Phillips revived the issue of a black hospital, this time
pushing for the construction of a large, state-of-the-art facility. In 1922, the city passed a bond
issue that allocated $1 million for this purpose, but political infighting delayed construction until
1932, one year after Phillipss death. Dedicated in 1937, Homer G. Phillips Hospital bore the
name of the man who had championed it for nearly two decades (see Figure 3).
12
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, and Missouris Governor Lloyd C. Stark
Figure 2.
Note: Photo of City Hospital #2 (Courtesy of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection).
were present as guests of honor at the opening and dedication ceremony, held on February 22,
1937.
13
Designed by architect Albert A. Osburg, the hospital complex is located at 2601 Whittier
Street in North St. Louis and consists of a central administration building with four radiating
patient wards, a service building, and a nurses residence. All of the buildings are faced with
yellow brick, are trimmed with Art Deco terra cotta, and are scaled to six and seven floors to blend
in with their residential surroundings (see Figure 4).
14
Since Homer G. Phillips Hospitals inception, the city of St. Louis treated it as a second
priority in municipal health care. Over the course of its history, the hospital developed as an
autonomous entity, separate from the other public hospital, City Hospital #1, and served an
isolated population in an increasingly socially and economically isolated area of St. Louis.
Regularly understaffed, Phillips Hospital consistently received considerably less funding and
support than City Hospital #1. At the time it opened, 224 Works Progress Administration and
National Youth Administration workers staffed Phillips Hospital; in July 1946, following termi-
nation of government funds for these workers, the city made no substantial effort to replace
them.
15
Despite these challenges, the hospital staff and the surrounding community took great
pride in the leadership of the hospital. At a 1946 meeting of intern alumni, 121 physicians
attended from thirty-eight states. A history of the hospital, written in 1961, featured photos of
all medical directors, superintendents, and directors of nursing since the hospital opened.
16
Figure 3.
Note: Photo of opening day celebration, Homer G. Phillips Hospital, 1937 (Courtesy of the Western Historical
Manuscript Collection).
Kirouac-Fram 599
Once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled restrictive housing covenants unenforceable in 1948
(Shelley v. Kraemer), however, the black middle class began a slow move away from the Ville,
replaced by working-class and indigent black residents who had been displaced by postwar urban
renewal efforts in the central area of St. Louis. The Ville became one of a collection of neighbor-
hoods referred to collectively and derisively as the north side, where working-class residents
had fewer financial resources for home maintenance and homeownership and the physical
appearance of the neighborhoods deteriorated. The self-contained nature of the Ville, which once
fostered growth and pride, now functioned to isolate its residents from the larger St. Louis
community. Those who had fled had little desire to revive a neighborhood that was to them a
symbol of repression.
17
Although segregation had provided the social-spatial framework in which
black St. Louisans cultivated numerous institutions and a sense of community, it was also the
condition most responsible for the decline of these same institutions, including Phillips Hospital,
less than fifty years later.
18
By the 1950s, city hospitals around the country had modeled themselves as custodial medical
centers where patients presented themselves and were treated and released once recovered.
In terms of staffing, equipment, and facilities, most were ill prepared for the growing emphasis
on research and community-based preventive care. For many cities, the idea of getting out of the
business of providing hospital care took hold in the 1960s: between 1961 and 1988, seventy-one
black public hospitals were closed, consolidated, or privatized. Of these, forty-nine were closed.
19

Between 1964 and 1974, five citiesSeattle, San Diego, Toledo, Kansas City, and Newark
transferred their public hospitals to state or private authorities and contracted for the care of
indigent patients. Public hospitals had become a costly, troublesome, constantly complaining,
unattractive, unloved brat.
20
Figure 4.
Note: Homer G. Phillips Hospital aerial photo (Courtesy of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection).
Diminishing city tax bases, the result of movement of middle- and upper-class households to
suburban areas, as well as the resulting physical and emotional isolation of these classes from the
inner-city poor, increased the difficulty of extracting necessary funds for public health care.
21
In
St. Louis, where the tax base for the city is separate from that of the suburban county, the problem
of funding was even greater as city governments found it increasingly difficult to maintain hospi-
tal revenue levels sufficient to cover rising medical costs.
22
A March 1977 editorial in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch cited the basic concern in the hospital consolidation issue as cost. City officials and
local newspaper editorials expressed confidence that consolidation of the citys two public hospi-
tals would improve the overall quality of medical care in St. Louis and that the quality of care
would continue to decline as long as the city expended resources to maintain duplicate services at
two hospitals (see Figure 5).
23
By 1976, thoughts of closing the hospital had circulated in St. Louis government for more
than twenty years; previous mayors, however, viewed any action toward that end to be political
suicide.
24
Sensing the unrest that immediate conversion or closure would precipitate, Mayor
John H. Poelker ordered an independent feasibility study regarding potential consolidation with
the citys other municipal hospital, City Hospital #1, located closer to the citys majority-white
southern neighborhoods.
25
The resulting report, released in September 1976, cited Phillips Hospital as a principle
resource to the local and national Black community . . . an anchor institution . . . providing eco-
nomic resources as well as community services, and a major resource for the education of
American Blacks. Still, the report concluded that the city should close Phillips Hospital and con-
solidate services at City Hospital #1, citing that a consolidation at Phillips would be too costly and
Figure 5.
Note: Editorial cartoon, January 5, 1978 (St. Louis American, January 5, 1978, p. 6).
Kirouac-Fram 601
would result in a hospital of inadequate size, far from major highways, and with less ground area
for parking.
26
Several of the citys black aldermen challenged these findings, asserting that the report lacked
an economic analysis of the impact of closing Phillips Hospital, which provided more than six
hundred jobs and $6 million in payroll to a severely depressed area. Nor, they agreed, did the
report take into account structural deficiencies that would require extensive renovation at City
Hospital #1 were the merger to take place.
27
Reaction in the press, however, was stern. It should
now be abundantly clear, wrote the Post-Dispatch, that the citys two general hospitals can
and should be consolidated at City Hospital.
28
In October 1976, in the midst of heavy debate,
the St. Louis Board of Estimate voted to keep both hospitals open through the use of federal
revenue-sharing funds.
Nearly a year later, in June 1977, newly elected St. Louis mayor James F. Conway appointed
a fourteen-member interracial task force to study the citys health service system, declaring that
he would endorse its decision even if it meant closing one of the two municipal hospitals.
29
In its
November 1977 report, the task force made several recommendations, including planning for
construction of a new public acute care facility, merging the two hospitals staffs under one
administration, eliminating duplicate services, and increasing utilization of neighborhood health
clinics.
30
Following through on his pledge of endorsement, Mayor Conway prepared a single budget for
the two municipal hospitals and announced in February 1977 that the merger of staff and admin-
istration would begin on May 1, 1978; he stated a long-term intention of replacing both hospitals
with a new facility. Many black city aldermen saw the merger as the first step toward an ultimate
closure of Phillips, prompting the mayor to defend his intentions. We have no ploy, Conway
announced, no design, no direction for closing Phillips. Still, St. Louiss black leadership har-
bored considerable doubt that a new public hospital would ever be built. Im satisfied, a bullish
Conway later stated, that all city residents, including the black community, will be supportive in
the end.
31
In May 1978, with Mayor Conways announcement of the consolidation of the hospitals
obstetrics and pediatrics divisions at City Hospital #1, Missouri State Senator J. B. Jet Banks
expressed a common sentiment: Conways doing this [hospital closure] piece by piece. That
same month, Detroits Mayor Coleman Young, while visiting St. Louis, gave a speech asserting
his theory that racism was the motive for the consolidation. When, in December 1978, the
St. Louis Board of Health and Hospitals recommended consolidation of all acute care (in-patient)
services at City Hospital, leaving only emergency and out-patient clinic services at Phillips
Hospital, north side alderman Freeman Bosley stated that keeping the Phillips Hospital open as
a full-service hospital was the last opportunity the black community has to save itself.
32
Black leaders early support for maintaining services at Homer G. Phillips, however, was
short-lived and disappeared from press accounts and mayoral correspondence by 1980. St. Louiss
black city aldermen and state representatives were a professional class whose voting records
demonstrate a commitment to urban renewal but also their awareness of the acceptable bound-
aries of practical reform. They faced the problem of the hollow prize, a term coined by urban
planner Paul Friesema in 1969 and later defined by historians Neil Kraus and Todd Swanstrom
as a city that has been depleted of the resources needed to significantly improve the quality of
the lives of the citys residents.
33
As industry, retail business, and taxable income followed the
upper- and middle-income populations out of the central city in the 1970s, St. Louis faced the
problem of maintaining infrastructure and public services for smaller populations with greater
needs. Elected by a groundswell of registered black voters following the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, St. Louiss new black aldermen quickly understood that election to local government
does not ensure the resources necessary to improve the quality of life for their majority-black
constituents. As the tax base shrank, St. Louis grew increasingly dependent on state and federal
funding, and as Friesema predicted in 1969, state legislatures, mostly whites representing
other whites, [became] even less interested in providing funds or other aid to cities.
34
Black
city aldermen faced the triple challenge of securing scarce funds during a period of fiscal con-
servatism, situating and fortifying their position within the political system, and simultaneously
making efforts to change the system itself to bring support back to the city.
35
They were, accord-
ing to historian Manning Marable, astute in the noisy discourse of the streets, but comfortable
in the quiet confines of corporate headquarters.
36
St. Louiss black leadership, while aware of
potential ramifications for poor black city residents, felt compelled to support growth and eco-
nomic development projects that were clearly regressive, subsuming human interests to the
promise of a rejuvenated tax base.
37
Neither the local NAACP nor the local Urban League expressed an opinion regarding the
Phillips Hospital issue during the seven years when its fate was debated. In April 1980, Mayor
Conway was a guest at the Urban Leagues annual dinner meeting, after which league president
William Douthit sent a letter apologizing for the lack of enthusiasm for his presence. Im afraid,
he wrote, the closing of Homer G. Phillips Hospital has left a sore place that is not yet healed. . . .
You deserve some special gratitude; it isnt easy to confront an audience that harbors hostile
feelings, I know. . . . I believe the Black community will eventually accept your decision . . . as
inevitable.
38
Arguments for consolidation of acute- and long-term care at City Hospital #1 were certainly
not without merit. Mayor James Conway, for example, consistently placed Phillips Hospital in the
context of the total municipal health system and argued for a more balanced, comprehensive pub-
lic health care approach. You cannot, he wrote, isolate Phillips Hospital from the rest of the
system any more than you can look at one branch of a tree and isolate it from the other branches,
from the trunk, from the roots, or from the climate.
39
He proposed consolidation of acute care
services away from Phillips Hospital as the preliminary step taken in order to upgrade the overall
health care delivery to the poor of our city and emphasized that hospitalization is the conse-
quence of lack of health care. Allocating funds to keep Phillips open as a full-service hospital
would deny funding to municipal clinics and education efforts that prevent illness among our
poor, and treat it at the earliest, pre-hospital stages. He relied on the 1977 task force finding that
priority be given to prevention, diagnosis, and out-patient treatment and declared in several letters
to concerned citizens that the poor are asking for a better overall health care system, and I intend
to do everything in my power to help them get it.
40
Judging by the letters received in Mayor Conways office in 1979 regarding the Phillips
Hospital consolidation, it is clear that many in the public saw their black leaders beginning to
following this rubric.
41
The rhetoric of City Hall and of black leaders supportive of the consoli-
dation was rife with references to cost savings and distribution of resources across a spectrum
of health care programs and devoid of reference to heritage, health security, or the genuine fear
expressed by many north side residents of a slow dismantling of their neighborhood.
42
Skepticism
grew regarding leaders financial priorities, and accusations surfaced of valuing a balanced
budget more than human need.
43
In October 1979, political activist Angela Davis made a speech at a St. Louis rally in support
of keeping Phillips Hospital open, urging listeners to boycott downtown: Mayor Conway wants
to save a measly $5 million [by closing the hospital], but he wants to put millions in that mall
where he wants you to spend your money. We should make a resolute decision not to set foot
downtown.
44
Indeed, in 1977, St. Louis built the Cervantes Convention Center through federal
revenue-sharing programs, at a cost of $34 million. In the years surrounding 1977, St. Louis
funded a downtown shopping mall, a marketplace and hotel at Union Station, and a restored
waterfront warehouse district.
45
As a letter writer stated, regarding the funding necessary to
Kirouac-Fram 603
keep Phillips Hospital in full-care operation, It is not enough to say we cant afford it. Have we
really tried?
46
Throughout the struggle to keep Phillips Hospital open, support from religious institutions
and their collective message of morality in health care were key organizing, financial, and moti-
vational components.
47
Early in 1979, for example, a group of more than one hundred north side
ministers organized as Ministers to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital and made their churches
available for voter registration and voter education meetings, and a North Side Ministerial
Alliance led more than three hundred people to gather at City Hall to protest the impending
closure. In September 1979, more than two hundred black ministers appealed to their congrega-
tions for financial support and involvement in the Phillips Hospital struggle.
48
By encouraging churchgoers to see the political issue in moral terms by emphasizing the neces-
sity to care for sick and poor people, inspiring a sense of group participation, assisting with
the logistics of political involvement, and offering spiritual guidance, religious institutions in
St. Louis mobilized passionate political activity. Letter writers invoked religion in ways ranging
from threats to the mayor of a vengeful God (who will shortly bring your rule to an end and
destroy you as he has destroyed those before you) to prayers for God to guide the mayor (I am
writing this letter in the name of (jesus christ) . . . praying that GOD will take a hand in this.).
49

A coalition of forty-eight ministers and bishops signed a resolution, sent to Mayor Conway, that
warned, God hears the cry of the poor and oppressed and takes action on their behalf against the
oppressor.
50
In March 1979, Reverend Joseph Lowrey, president of the Southern Christian Lead-
ership Conference, joined the ranks of Phillips Hospital supporters and brought national, ominous
significance to the issue, suggesting that the struggle may be the symbol, the handle, the turning
point where black people see that God wants to use them as vessels to save this nation.
51
Although religious organizations organized and led early protest activities, the mid-April
consolidation fulfillment and the announcement of concomitant plans to phase out the Phillips
Hospital nursing school inspired a more aggressive protest leadership.
52
By May 1979, the
Committee to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital, a grassroots group of religious leaders, hospital
employees, and neighborhood residents, had organized a boycott of City Hospital. Through the
use of voluntary carpools to transport incoming patients from City Hospital to other area hospitals,
boycotters would deprive the city of revenue from insured and Medicare/Medicaid patients,
which made up 65 percent of the hospitals $60 million budget. By means of daily pickets at
City Hospital and a program of leaflets, phone banks, and church sermons on Sundays, they
planned to educate north side residents regarding the mayors decision to consolidate.
53
A work
stoppage took place from May 7 through 9 for all downtown workers and city employees, and
although it was not wholly successful due to many supporters tenuous hold on low-paying,
high-turnover jobs, it received adequate attention in the press.
54
For three days, protesters opposing the consolidation held a sit-in outside the mayors office
door.
55
On the first day, police arrested forty-seven protesters, carrying them out on stretchers;
the remaining protesters pledged to return the next day. Many of the participants in this three-day
sit-in were Phillips Hospital lab technicians; the lab at Phillips had been partially consolidated on
the first day of the demonstration. Prosecutors charged arrested protestors with trespassing
and resisting arrest; as police carried them out of City Hall, they sang We Shall Overcome, an
anthem of labor union and civil rights activism.
56
Although these activities received considerable coverage in the press, protesters arguments for
halting hospital consolidation were not unified; press reports of protest actions often express con-
fusion or antagonism toward what reporters perceived as loud, irrational protest. The confusion
was furthered when, in July 1979, the Committee to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital fractured.
A heterogeneous umbrella group, the committee was the largest secular opposition organization,
comprising individuals with diverse motivations for saving the hospital; disorganization and lack
of a unified message resulted in factions within the group competing for priority and leadership.
Along with allegations of misspent funds and secret negotiations emerged a new opposition group,
the Ad Hoc Committee to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital, whose spokesman stated that the
original committee had been ignoring the rank and file. A spokesman from the Committee to
Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital retorted in the press with a statement indicating that the new
group had communist tendencies, referring to its members socially democratic rhetoric.
The Ad Hoc Committee, which would become the largest, loudest, and most durable oppo-
sition group, had a large contingent of Phillips Hospital nurses and laborers. They attempted to
clarify their position and rationale through a letter to the editor of the St. Louis American, which
stated that they stood for the people and called for unity of labor organizations, churches, com-
munity organizations, concerned citizensboth black and white, senior citizens and our youth to
support their efforts to maintain Phillips Hospital as an acute care facility.
57
In undated speech
notes, Frank Chapman, the groups co-chairman, emphasized, the attack against poor people
and working people always begins with Black people because racism is the route of least resis-
tance. The Ad Hoc Committee, he wrote, would wage a mass education campaign to show
people how and why Civic Progress, Inc. [a prominent, powerful alliance of St. Louis business
leaders] controls our city economically and politically.
58
In a brochure soliciting support,
co-chairperson Zenobia Thompson of the Ad Hoc Committee, a former Phillips Hospital nurse,
summed up the groups purpose: In the final analysis, I am fighting for the most basic human
right of the poor and indigent to adequate and accessible health care!
59
Working through an ideology of citizenship, the Ad Hoc Committee consistently positioned
the closing of Phillips Hospital as a form of disenfranchisement and a violation of basic human
rights. Proponents of closing Phillips Hospital countered that the opportunity to be treated at City
Hospital #1 was readily available, but the majority-white physician and nurse workforce at City
Hospital #1, the extra cross-town travel time for emergencies, and the long bus ride for mainte-
nance and preventive care made that option difficult for many black north side residents to appre-
ciate. Fears of death in transit, long waits, daylong round-trip bus rides, and mistreatment at the
hands of white physicians and nurses inspired many black north side residents to regard the
Phillips Hospital struggle as analogous to the civil rights protests twenty-five years earlier.
Responding to these fears, the Ad Hoc Committee stressed the necessity for local government to
recognize health care as a citizenship element as equivalently vital, universal, and valid as the
struggle for voting rights that culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A 1980 Ad Hoc Committee poster, for example, features a rendering of Martin Luther King Jr.
and the headline, 1980 SpiritWe Shall Overcome / Inspiration from the worlds greatest civil
rights leader. Save Homer G. Phillips Hosp. NOW. A hand at the top of the poster, labeled The
Equalizer, holds a set of scales. One pan is hidden behind the portrait of King; the other pan,
labeled Faith and Truth, contains a rendering of the Phillips Hospital complex. The buildings
are glowing, shining like a beacon, under the heading, To serve the community best. . . .
60
To the
left of the hospital is the portrait of King against a starry background, with cross-shaped twinkles
in his eyes. The quotation underneath his likeness reads, For right, with god, all things are
possible, so be it. He is labeled, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Great Civil Rights and Spiritual
Leader. Spencer Thorton Banks, who typeset his name and the title, Christian Master Artist,
added the adjective American to his title, perhaps emphasizing his pride in his citizenship and
ownership of civil rights.
The use of King as a figure in this struggle is a choice that deserves examination beyond its
utility to call forth the civil rights movement, especially in light of the fact that Phillips Hospital
was a symbol of segregation; some middle-class blacks in St. Louis regarded the hospital as
a shrine to racism.
61
Although the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the United States signifies
oppression, holiday observances rarely attribute political goals to King. Rather, they invoke
Kirouac-Fram 605
values, such as equality and freedom, which function as commendations, what Richard
Merleman calls hurrah words, rather than tangible political ideals such as empowerment.
Moreover, King holiday ceremonies often depict King as a civil rights leader and gloss over his
involvement as an antiwar activist and proponent of income redistribution; this simplification
maintains the symbol of King as the great unifier, a symbol to which most black Americans can
cleave. King also symbolizes nonviolent disobedience, eloquent oratory, and interracial coop-
eration; the use of his likeness as a symbol may have contributed to a less threatening view of the
activists who employed it.
62
References to the civil rights movement in the press, however, alter-
nately gave readers a sense of the activists commitment and sense of justice or parodied their
efforts as insignificant in comparison to the real civil rights movement a decade earlier.
63
Despite their best efforts, members of the Ad Hoc Committee were helpless to watch as the
St. Louis Department of Health and Hospitals halted all in-patient admissions at Phillips Hospital
at 4 p.m. on August 1, 1979. All patients seeking admission at Phillips Hospital were transported,
via van or ambulance, to City Hospital #1.
64
The night before, eight protesters began a weeks-
long campout on the grounds of Phillips Hospital; they erected a barricade made of bed parts,
chairs, and benches from inside the hospital and placed heavy chains on the hospital gates in an
effort to keep city officials from removing furniture and equipment. Over several weeks, fellow
demonstrators, varying in number from less than 5 per day to more than 150, joined them. On
August 6, 1979, 250 of the 600 Phillips Hospital employees signed a resolution protesting the
consolidation of acute services and stating that they would not accept employment transfer to
City Hospital. We reject and refuse to obey the unjust orders and rules from Mayor Conway and
[Hospital Commissioner] R. Dean Wochner, who blatantly and criminally violate the constitu-
tional and human rights of the citizens and taxpayers of this community, they wrote. Employees
of Homer G. say hell no, we are not moving. We will not be moved.
65
On August 17, in a massive display of force, city officials sent 120 policemen in riot gear to
Phillips Hospital to deal with approximately one hundred protesters during the final transfer of the
remaining forty-seven Phillips acute-care patients to City Hospital. Police arrested seventeen pro-
testers under charges of failure to obey a police officer when at least fifty people sat down in the
main hospital driveway to prevent transfer vans from leaving. Pearlie Evans, aide to U.S. Repre-
sentative William Clay, was present at the protest; her sentiments, quoted in the Post-Dispatch,
captured the feeling of that day: the squad was brought in to overpower poor, helpless people
whose only concern was that they have some place to go near their homes when they get sick.
Missouri State Senator Gwen B. Giles, also quoted in the Post-Dispatch, took note: Conway
declared war on black St. Louis today.
66
Within the first week of the completed consolidation of acute care services, the number of
daily emergency room visits fell 50 percent at Phillips Hospital. Many at the hospital feared a
public perception of complete closure. Others felt that the decline ensued from an understanding
of emergency services as the first step toward admission; potential emergency patients would be
inclined to visit the hospital where admittance for acute care was possible.
67
Although this decline suggested community apathy toward the Phillips Hospital cause, come-
dian and social justice activist Dick Gregory, a St. Louis native, joined the Ad Hoc Committee and
another group, Concerned Students to Save Homer G. Phillips, in a protest march from Phillips
Hospital to City Hall on August 31, 1979. Phillips should be a national monument, he declared
at the march. It saved black minds when blacks couldnt even walk on the streets where white
hospitals were located.
68
That day, more than two hundred protesters sat down at the intersection
of 12th Street and Market Street, a major intersection in downtown St. Louis in front of City Hall,
blocking traffic for at least two hours (see Figure 6).
69
Police arrested seventy-two people, includ-
ing Gregory, and interoffice communications at City Hall suggest that the private employers of
arrested individuals be made aware of [their] obscene behavior.
70
That September, twenty-five
people completed a twenty-five-hour march around St. Louis to protest the consolidation, and
a group led by the Ad Hoc Committee marched 137 miles in November to Jefferson City to
present Governor Joseph Teasdale with petitions signed by hundreds of citizens opposed to the
consolidation.
In his speech, Gregory was referring to the personal histories of being born, having children, or
feeling uplifted at Phillips Hospital that generated a sense of heritage and a prominent rationale
for maintaining a full range of services at the hospital. Letters, speeches, and posters throughout
the years of struggle spoke to the need to preserve Phillips Hospital as a symbol of family, striving,
and community potential. In April 1980, the Ad Hoc Committee held a one hundredth birthday
celebration in honor of attorney Homer G. Phillips. A poster advertising birthday festivities fea-
tures a number of activities, including a prayer service on the hospital grounds, a rally, a banquet
to raise funds for legal efforts to reopen the hospital, a public hearing, an educational health care
expo with displays for students in grade school through college, and a State of the City address.
The committee invited everyone to the celebration; the guests of honor, however, were those who
had been born at Homer G. Phillips Hospital.
On the poster, next to a rendering of attorney Phillips, the artist sketched a black family from
an earlier agedad is wearing a straw hat, son is wearing knickers, and there are warm wooden
cabins with smoking chimneys drawn in the background. The family has been cared for, presum-
ably by the first workers at Phillips Hospital in 1937: dad has a cast on his leg, son has a cast on
Figure 6.
Note: Photo of Homer G. Phillips Hospital supporters at City Hall on August 31, 1979 (Photographer: Bill Kesler; St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, September 2, 1979, 12G).
Kirouac-Fram 607
his arm. The family image emphasizes not only the heritage of the institution but also the important
role Phillips Hospital played in the care of thousands of black families in St. Louis for more than
forty years.
71
With emotions running high in the north side communities, the Ad Hoc Committee was not
able to channel the totality of resistance efforts into a unified front. While the protest actions of the
Ad Hoc Committee received press attention as forms of extraordinary disobedience, there were
many uncited instances of associated infrapolitical activity that illustrate a diverse movement
much larger than the committee itself. For example, a physician at Phillips Hospital admitted
patients to the hospital more than a week after admissions had been halted, and anonymous phone
callers threatened proconsolidation aldermen. An anonymous group distributed flyers featuring a
death skull and characterizing St. Louis as rolling out the carpet for Murder and Genocide at the
convention center, urging conventioneers to boycott St. Louis as the host for future conventions.
Hospital staff wrote anonymous letters to the mayor, and several Phillips Hospital employees did
not report to their new assignments at City Hospital #1, risking termination, while others hid
equipment slated for transfer to City Hospital #1.
72
In addition to these covert resistance efforts, several prominent organizations also wrote to
the mayor to openly express support of keeping Phillips Hospital open as an acute care facility,
including the UAW, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the National Association of Black
Social Workers, the Congress of Racial Equality, several neighborhood associations, and an
interfaith coalition of eight denominations.
73
Individuals wrote signed letters of opposition to
Mayor Conway, expressing feelings of betrayal, heritage, history, and pride. One letter spoke of
the image of Homer G. Phillips and the motivation it provides to our Black youth, [which] has
a value far in excess of the dollars projected to be saved, of creating an atmosphere of striving
and becoming worthwhile, useful and working citizens. Many letters expressed pride in Phillips
Hospital, what one writer called that noble and great institution that has meant so much, and
indeed, has done so much good to so many. Another deemed Phillips Hospital a functioning
landmark that is near sacred to the hearts and memories of racial minorities of the greater met-
ropolitan area. Others expressed sadness at the loss of full services at Phillips and at the loss
of a history of births, training, and healing. One woman, signing her letter, Tax-payer, voter,
Black U.S. Citizen, wrote that to forget Homer G. Phillips is like forgetting to eat. It is a
household word. Many of the letters contained misspellings and nearly illegible handwriting,
and several were addressed simply to, Mayor. City Hall. St. Louis.
74
By January 3, 1980, the last of the acute- and long-term care equipment and furnishings had
been moved from Phillips Hospital to City Hospital, and consolidation was complete. In June
1980, in partnership with the St. Louis Tenants Union and the local chapter of the National
Alliance against Racist and Political Oppression, the Ad Hoc Committee issued a ten-point
indictment of Mayor Conway and a citizens subpoena requesting his presence at a public
meeting to defend his actions. The crimes in the indictment included genocide against the
black community, lying, fraud, arrogance, and deception. A mayors aide answered a Post-
Dispatch reporters question as to whether the mayor would attend the hearing: I doubt it.
75

Indeed, the mayor did not attend the hearing; only about two dozen people attended, and few
black leaders were in attendance.
76
Although approximately seventy-five people participated
in a march to City Hall to mark the first anniversary of the hospitals closing in August 1980,
it was clear that public support was waning; the Ad Hoc Committee was portrayed in the media
as increasingly foolish in its efforts to carry on.
By September 1980, the out-patient clinic at Phillips Hospital was open only from 8 a.m. to
4:30 p.m., making it difficult for shift workers to refill prescriptions or see a doctor without los-
ing pay; anyone who was determined to need lab tests faced an entire day of riding the bus
from Phillips to City Hospital and back. The emergency room by this time was equipped only to
stabilize patients for a trip to City Hospital; it lacked an operating room and a recovery room.
Phillips Hospital no longer had a blood bank, precluding emergency blood transfusions. Aware
of these limitations, ambulances rarely delivered patients to Phillips. A great sense of isolation
and inferiority circulated among the staff; a Post-Dispatch reporter described Phillips as not hav-
ing workers or patients in the clinic or emergency room to negate Phillips general appearance
as a kind of medical ghost town. Plans to convert vacant floors into geriatric care facilities were
not yet on a timeline due to a lack of funds for renovation.
77
On November 6, an anonymous, unaffiliated activist threw animal blood on the door of Mayor
Conways City Hall office; on November 20, a similar incident occurred at the door of a St. Louis
circuit judge who had recently denied an injunction filed by the Ad Hoc Committee to
reverse consolidation. A note left at the mayors door stated, You got blood on your hands.
Justice for Homer G. Phillips. In an unrelated move, but perhaps to further emphasize its
mission and distance itself from such acts, the committee changed its name to the Campaign for
Human Dignity. Cochairperson Zenobia Thompson declared, This is not a black-white issue
this is one of human dignity.
78
Despite the fragmentary nature of the resistance movement, the Homer G. Phillips Hospital
issue retained the power to move the black working-class vote. In 1981, a young white alderman
named Vincent Schoemehl ran for the Democratic mayoral nomination against white incumbent
James F. Conway. In campaign speeches reported over several months, Schoemehl asserted that
he favored reopening Phillips Hospital, but only if City Hospital were closed; he based his support
for reopening on his belief that Phillips could be air-conditioned and renovated at a lower cost than
that for similar necessary improvements at City Hospital. Few in the press thought that the Phillips
issue would play a large role in the 1981 mayoral election, assuming both low turnout in the north-
ern wards and a forward-looking attitude regarding health care for those who did turn out to vote.
The St. Louis American, the largest black-owned newspaper in St. Louis, endorsed Conway in
February as an energetic, enthusiastic, and effective mayor who had not been perfect. . . . But
on the balance sheet he has been one of the great Mayors in our towns history.
79
On March 3, 1981, Vince Schoemehl defeated Conway, winning the Democratic nomination
by a 2-to-1 margin as voters undid several black wards whose aldermen had promised their sup-
port to Conway. Well aware of his mandate, Schoemehl pledged to reconsolidate the hospital
system at Phillips Hospital within nine months, as a full-service hospital, if elected mayor in
April. Referencing the budget crisis faced by St. Louis at that time, Schoemehls Republican
opponent countered that reopening Phillips would not be financially possible, that Schoemehl
would need a printing press to print money to reopen it. He was not alone; many in St. Louis
immediately doubted Schoemehls ability to reconsolidate.
80
Prior to the hospitals closing in 1979, the state of Missouri exempted Phillips Hospital, through
a grandfather clause, from state standards governing hospital building codes. Closing, however,
effectively surrendered the hospitals old license; reopening, the state determined just one week
after Schoemehls pledge, would require more than $30 million in renovations and upgrades.
Schoemehl backed down from his nine-month goal for reopening but reasserted that reopening
remained his objective. His Republican opponent deemed Schoemehls plans for financing the
hospital through a complicated combination of revenue bonds, tax shelters, nonprofit corpora-
tions, private firm management, and quick investor depreciation a tower of whipped cream.
81
In March, the Campaign for Human Dignity announced that it had obtained more than forty
thousand signatures on a petition to reopen Phillips Hospital, more than enough to ensure inclu-
sion of the initiative on the April 7 mayoral election ballot. Schoemehl easily won the election,
but the ballot initiative failed by 3,931 votes, falling just four percentage points short of the goal
of 60 percent approval. Acknowledging that a majority vote had been cast, Schoemehl again
reaffirmed his dubious pledge to reopen the hospital (see Figure 7). In August 1981, he pushed
Kirouac-Fram 609
forward a $250,000 study to determine the citys hospital needs and establish the role the city
should play in public health care. On August 17, the Campaign for Human Dignity and several
supportive community groups held a rally on the grounds of Phillips Hospital to mark the second
anniversary of the closing.
82
By January 1982, Phillips supporters were beginning to lose faith in their new mayor. Nearly
forty protesters marched from Phillips Hospital to Mayor Schoemehls home, carrying a coffin
labeled, Schoemehl Lies of 1981. In April, however, the mayor proposed a $60 million bond
issue to reopen Phillips and a city charter amendment that would allow the city to hire a private
nonprofit group to run the hospital; reopening would require a two-thirds majority on each
measure. Aldermen in both black- and white-dominated wards considered that both the bond
issue and the amendment had little chance of passing, especially in the majority-white southern
section of the city. Black aldermen decried the effort as insincere, paving the way for the admin-
istration to lay the blame for the failure to reopen Phillips Hospital at voters feet. During a rally
in support of the upcoming November ballot initiative, members of the Campaign for Human
Dignity heckled the mayor, deploring his perceived insincerity and claiming that the plan would
not provide an adequate number of beds for indigent patients. Stressing the right to quality health
Figure 7.
Note: Editorial cartoon, March 12, 1981 (St. Louis American, March 12, 1981, p. 6).
care over the need for budgetary practicalities, they wanted both City Hospital and Phillips
Hospital to operate as full-service public hospitals.
83
On November 2, 1982, although black residents of the citys north side wards approved both
measures by more than a 10 percent margin, both the bond issue and the amendment failed to pass.
Mayor Schoemehl announced that he was abandoning his efforts to reopen Phillips Hospital.
84
For
the next three years, until the city of St. Louis officially closed Phillips Hospital completely in
1985, the Campaign for Human Dignity continued the fight.
By June 1983, most services at Phillips Hospital had been cut. In May 1984, the St. Louis
Department of Health and Hospitals cut physicians salaries at Phillips by one-third, leaving thir-
teen physicians to staff a twenty-four-hour emergency center and daytime out-patient clinic that
served more than 250 people daily. A $32.8 million bond issue to reopen Phillips as a full-service
hospital, initiated by the Campaign for Human Dignity, was defeated in November 1984; it
received strong support from the citys north side residents but was firmly opposed by majority-
white south side voters. The campaigns repeated efforts to place a $.01 sales tax on the ballot to
raise funds to reopen the hospital were finally shut down in January 1985 with a refusal by the
Board of Aldermen to allow it to move forward. In early 1985, Mayor Schoemehl entered into a
deal with St. Louis County to build the public St. Louis Regional Medical Center, a city-county
partnership project that closed both Phillips Hospital and City Hospital #1 for good.
85
Through an
effort initiated by the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, which stressed the buildings archi-
tectural, educational, and historical significance, Homer G. Phillips Hospital was listed in the
National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
86
More than two decades later, after significant reno-
vation financed through private sources, it reopened in June 2003 as Homer G. Phillips Dignity
House, a 220-unit, skillfully restored low-income senior living facility.
The failure to reopen Phillips as a full-service hospital is the result of several factors, including
a lack of support from black elite leadership, unsuccessful framing of the issue by opposition
groups, repression, disorganization, and a lack of resources. However, the emphasis in this article
is not causation but rather the substantial diversity of opinion and strategy that emerged from an
ostensibly unified, homogeneous black community. The struggle to preserve Homer G. Phillips
Hospital illustrates the lack of a single, unified black agenda and demonstrates an oversimplifi-
cation in the predominant discourse of black politics. Moreover, it is a powerful illustration of
how shared interests do not necessarily lead to, or stem from, the existence of shared ideology. St.
Louiss diverse black community approached a shared interestfull participation in a safer, more
prosperous north sidethrough dichotomized ideologies regarding the means to that end. As
working-class community members with countless and varied personal motivations lined the
streets of downtown St. Louis in support of Homer G. Phillips Hospital in 1979, the unifying
aspiration was that of renewal: of civic influence, of community cohesion, of municipal services.
For black St. Louis middle- and upper-class leaders who had already departed, physically or emo-
tionally, from the black north side neighborhoods of St. Louis, closure and renovated repurposing
of Phillips Hospital, rather than preserving a relic of segregation, served their alternative renewal
ideology.
Even the north side residents who remained to inherit the crumbling neighborhoods and
fought to keep Homer G. Phillips Hospital open and in service were working from a variety of
personal and community motivations. Individuals and groups working from a moral perspective
viewed the closing as a violation of a mandate to care for sick and poor city residents. Others
understood Homer G. Phillips Hospital as a part of family and community heritage, or as a symbol
of striving and success. Still others considered health care to be an element of citizenship that
was embodied in the tumultuous, uplifting history of Homer G. Phillips Hospital. The socially
democratic rhetoric employed by the most significant opposition groups was heavily flavored
with reference to class, demanding equal and unburdened access to health care for St. Louiss
Kirouac-Fram 611
low-income north side residents. For all of these reasons, the struggle to save Homer G. Phillips
Hospital was a manifold struggle for enfranchisement. In many ways, it was the last stand of
wounded hopes for community sustenance in an era of unrelenting economic decline, a struggle
to remain visible in a vanishing city.
Acknowledgments
This article has benefited from the comments, suggestions, and thoughtfulness of several individuals. The
original work emerged from a graduate seminar with Joseph Heathcott at Saint Louis University, whose
guidance helped me shape and hone my initial argument. The audience at the conference, Who Claims
the City: Thinking Race, Class, and Urban Space, at Marquette University in 2008 provided durable feedback.
Finally, the anonymous reviewers provided precise, specific remarks that resulted in a tighter thesis and
refined sociohistorical context.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.
Notes
1. Sally Thran, Predicts Defeat of Phillips Plan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 5, 1976, 3A.
2. Bob Christman, Save Hospitals, Panel Urges, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1976, 1C.
3. Frando Webb, DePaul Closing Stirs Health Desert Fears, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 19, 1976, 1C.
4. Homer G. Phillips: 25th Anniversary, unpaged program booklet, John D. Buckner Papers, Western
Historical Manuscript Collection (hereafter referred to as WHMC) 468, Box 1.
5. Preston Smith adopts a similar approach in his analysis of postwar housing struggles in Chicago. See
Preston H. Smith, The Quest for Racial Democracy: Black Civic Ideology and Housing Interests in
Postwar Chicago, Journal of Urban History 26, no. 2 (2000): 132-33.
6. When describing unstable, deindustrialized labor markets such as St. Louis, I refer to low-income
residents who are in and out of work, whether or not they are at times receiving assistance, as working
class. As Robin Kelley writes, the black working class comprises simply people whose very survival
depends on work or some form of income. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels (New York: Free
Press, 1994), 13.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the urban environment has been contested terrain for disenfran-
chised groups and individuals with a variety of motives, including social status, residence rights,
and recreation, but rarely preservation. See Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 3.
7. In researching this article, I have relied heavily on newspaper accounts to reconstruct the narrative of
events from 1976 through 1984, when the final bond issue to reopen the hospital failed. I have consulted
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the citys largest mainstream newspaper, and the St. Louis American, the
citys largest black-owned newspaper, to tease out multiple voices. Rather than relying on reporters
interpretations of events, I have concentrated on quoted material to gauge reaction and response to
events as they unfolded. I have also examined posters, flyers, brochures, memos, and unpublished inter-
office reports as well as many of the hundreds of letters in support of, and against, the closing of Phillips
Hospital.
8. Joseph Heathcott, Black Archipelago: Politics and Civic Life in the Jim Crow City, Journal of Social
History 38, no. 3 (2005): 709-14.
9. Sandra Schoenberg, Community Stability and Decay in St. Louis: The Ethnic Factor in Two Urban
Neighborhoods, Ethnicity 7, no. 3 (1980): 407-408.
10. Heathcott, Black Archipelago, 718.
11. Ibid., 713-24.
12. Ernest Calloway, The Strange 50-Year Mystery of the Unsolved Murder of Homer Phillips, St. Louis
American, February 5, 1981, 7.
13. Dedicatory Program, Homer G. Phillips Hospital, February 22, 1937, Lowe Family Papers, WHMC 123,
Folder 2.
14. National Register of Historic Places InventoryNomination Form, March 31, 1982, St. Louis Vertical
File, WHMC 694, Box 16.
15. Report to the League of Women Voters Civic Committee, April 30, 1943, League of Women Voters
Records, WHMC 530, Box 54; Letter from Mrs. Ralph W. Thayer to Mrs. Avery Alexander, May 5,
1943, League of Women Voters Records, WHMC 530, Box 54.
16. H. Phillip Venable, The History of Homer G. Phillips Hospital, Journal of the National Medical
Association 53, no. 6 (1961): 541-55.
17. Schoenberg, Community Stability and Decay, 416.
18. Ibid, 416; Heathcott, Black Archipelago, 706.
19. Mitchell F. Rice and Woodrow Jones Jr., Public Policy and the Black Hospital (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1994), 101.
20. Harry F. Dowling, City Hospitals: The Undercare of the Underprivileged (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982), 185.
21. Dowling, City Hospitals, 185.
22. According to historian Mitchell F. Rice, two prominent phenomena, when combined with decreasing
tax revenue, precipitated the closings of black hospitals: integration and the advent of Medicare and
Medicaid. Municipalities built black hospitals, he writes, to serve black people in an era when they
could not receive adequate health care at white-run facilities due to exclusion or limited admission.
Integration lessened the use of black hospitals by both black physicians and black self-pay patients
as both groups sought the larger facilities and better equipment found at private, historically white
hospitals. Price controls instituted under Medicare and Medicaid led private hospitals to limit or
exclude patients covered by those programs. As a result, the indigent patient load was relegated to pub-
lic hospitals, which in turn suffered financial disadvantage. Black public hospitals also tend to carry a
large load of nonpaying patients not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, further challenging the financial
health of the hospitals. See Rice and Jones, Public Policy, 107-108.
23. Hospital Warning, editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 18, 1977, 2E.
24. Jo Mannies, Surprise Said to Have Aided Phillips Move, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 16,
1979, 12A.
25. Gerald M. Boyd, Estimate Board Keeps All Four Hospitals, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1976, 1A.
26. Leroy Pesch and Symuel Smith, Report of the Study on Hospital Needs under the Jurisdiction of
the City of St. Louis, Missouri, September 28, 1976, James F. Conway Papers, University Archives,
Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries (hereafter referred to JFC Papers,
WUSC), Series 2, Box 22.
27. Gerald M. Boyd, Black Leaders Say Hospital Consultants Exceeded Mandate, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, September 22, 1976, 1A.
28. Mr. Simon Sits, editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 29, 1976, 2B.
29. Tommy Robertson, Would Back Closing Hospital if Panel Urges It, St. Louis Post Dispatch, June 25,
1977, 3A.
30. Health Service System Task Force Report to Mayor James F. Conway, December 16, 1977, JFC Papers,
WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
Kirouac-Fram 613
31. Philip Sutin, City, Phillips Hospitals Merger Will Begin May 1, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 9,
1978, 3A; Philip Sutin, Black Aldermen May Try to Block Budget over Phillips, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, April 23, 1978, 2C; Philip Sutin and David Fink, Phillips Hospital Wont Be Shut, Conway
Tells Internes Group, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 2, 1978, 1C.
32. Steve Korris, Mayors Hospital Plan Angers Black Politicians; Big Fight Promised, St. Louis American,
May 4, 1978, 1; Robert Kelly, Racism behind Plan to Merge Hospitals, Detroit Mayor Says, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, May 4, 1978, 9A; Gregory Freeman, New Plan by Hospital Task Force Draws Fire from
Black Aldermen, St. Louis American, January 5, 1978, 1.
33. Paul Friesema, Black Control of Central Cities: The Hollow Prize, American Institute of Planners
Journal 35 (1969): 75-79; Neil Kraus and Todd Swanstrom, Minority Mayors and the Hollow-prize
Problem, PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 1 (2001): 102.
34. Friesema, Black Control of Central Cities, 77.
35. Lucius Barker, Limits of Political Strategy: A Systemic View of the African American Experience,
American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (1994): 4-8.
36. Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics (London: Verso,
1995), 77.
37. Adolph Reed Jr., Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-segregation Era (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999), 5.
38. Letter from William Douthit to James F. Conway, April 25, 1980, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 65.
39. Report on Health Care Delivery, booklet, October 31, 1980, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
40. Letter from James F. Conway to Reverend Haymond Fortenberry, September 26, 1979, JFC Papers,
WUSC, Series 2, Box 22; Letter from James F. Conway to Reverend D. C. Fleary, September 20, 1979,
JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
41. Letter from Ridgeway A. Butler to Mayor James F. Conway, May 4, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2,
Box 23; Letter from Dumena Thompson to Mayor James F. Conway, May 22, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC,
Series 2, Box 23.
42. Letter from James F. Conway to Reverend Haymond Fortenberry, September 26, 1979, JFC Papers,
WUSC, Series 2, Box 22; LaBertha Blair and James Whittico, Task Force Members, St. Louis
American, 9; Clarice Murphy, What Task Members Think, St. Louis American, 3.
43. Resolution of the Ministers to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital, September 20, 1979, JFC Papers,
44. George E. Curry, Angela Davis Assails Cutbacks at Phillips, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 29,
1979, 1C.
45. Heywood Sanders, Research Brief: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development
Strategy, (Brookings Institute, 2005), http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20050117_convention
centers.pdf.
46. Letter from Lorraine Odum to Mayor James F. Conway, July 31, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2,
Box 22.
47. Religious institutions in America, as sources of self-empowerment and symbols of indigenous culture,
have served as a locus of black resistance dating back to times of slavery. The black church provided the
leadership, interaction, and communication networks necessary for effective collective action during
the civil rights movement, and these roles have been preserved in the so-called postcivil rights era.
See Fredrick C. Harris, Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 6; regarding the role of the black church in postcivil rights era politics;
see Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
48. William C. Lhotka and Geof Dubson, 300 Rally for Phillips at City Hall, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
February 9, 1979, 1B; Robert Kelly, Ministers Pushing to Keep Phillips as General Hospital, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, January 26, 1979, 16B; Black Ministers to Appeal for Phillips Donations, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, September 12, 1979, 1B.
49. Letter from Leroy Muhammad to James F. Conway, June 8, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23;
Letter from Chevis Vaughn to James F. Conway, May 31, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
50. Resolution of the Ministers to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital, September 20, 1979, JFC Papers,
51. Daphne Walker, Homer Phillips Closing Not Isolated Incident, St. Louis American, March 1, 1979, 14.
52. George E. Curry, Group Withdraws Plan to Run Phillips, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1979, 1A.
53. David Fink, North Side Leaders Plan Hospital Boycott, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1979, 1C.
54. Letter from Jacqueline Bell to James F. Conway, May 22, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23.
55. Because the St. Louis print media did not often identify specific protest groups, often simply referring to
them as the protesters, I am not always able to specify which groups were responsible for the protest
actions described in this article. To fully document the diversity of struggle involved in the Phillips
Hospital closing, however, I include these uncredited activities.
56. David Fink and Robert Kelly, Hospital Protesters Undaunted by 47 Arrests, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
February 1, 1979, 1A.
57. Letter to the editor from the Ad Hoc Committee to Save Homer G. Phillips Hospital, St. Louis American,
July 26, 1979, 6.
58. Frank Chapman, Notes for a Report on Public Health Care and Homer G. Phillips, undated, Black
History Project Collection, WHMC 201, Box 6.
59. Justice for Zenobia Thompson, brochure, undated, Black History Project Collection, WHMC 201, Box 6.
60. Save Homer G. Phillips Hosp. NOW, 1980 Poster, no date, St. Louis Vertical File, WHMC 694, file 7.
61. Steve Korris, Middle Class Manipulates Black Poor, Calloway Charges, St. Louis American, March 29,
1979, 1.
62. Richard M. Merelman, Representing Black Culture: Racial Conflict and Cultural Politics in the United
States (New York: Routledge, 1995), 79-88.
63. Steve Korris, Mayors Critics Growing Bolder, St. Louis American, March 22, 1979, 1; Bennie Rodgers
and Daphne Walker, Save Phillips Committee Has More Confusion Now than Ever Before, St. Louis
American, April 26, 1979, 14; Poor Support; Plenty Standing Room at Phillips Mass Rally,
St. Louis American, June 28, 1979, 1.
64. Interoffice memo from James H. Sullivan to all concerned, August 1, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC,
Series 2, Box 23.
65. Jo Mannies and D. D. Obika, Phillips Admissions Dwindle; Protesters Thrarted, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, August 3, 1979, 3A; Yvonne Samuel Major, Phillips Struggle Intensifies, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, August 6, 1979, 1B.
66. Robert L. Joiner, 120 Police Mass at Phillips for Transfer of Patients, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
August 17, 1979, 1A; Massed Policemen Shield Phillips, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1979,
1A; Robert L. Joiner and Sally Bixby Defty, Phillips Backers Threaten Boycott, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, August 18, 1979, 1A.
67. Linda Lockhart, U.S. Judge Delays Action in Suit by Phillips Backers, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
August 20, 1979, 3A.
68. Kevin Horrigan and Robert L. Joiner, Gregory Links Speculators, Phillips Closing, August 30, 1979, 3A.
69. Metropolitan Police DepartmentCity of St. Louis, Intradepartment Report and Correspondence
Sheet, August 31, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
70. Unsigned memo attached to arrest records for seventy-two individuals, August 31, 1979, JFC Papers,
71. Homer G. Phillips birthday observance poster, no date, Black History Project Collection, WHMC 201,
file 6.
72. Sally Bixby Defty, Phillips Doctor Suspended: Violated Admittance Orders, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
August 12, 1979, 2B; David Fink, FBI Is Looking into Alleged Threats against Hospital Committee
Workers, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 9, 1978, 3A; Rolling out the Carpet for Murder and
Genocide, flyer, no date, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23; Letter from Save Homer G. Phillips and
Kirouac-Fram 615
All Public Hospitals to Mayor James F. Conway, August 7, 1979, WHMC 582, file 4; Letter from John
Noble to Homer G. Phillips Hospital Employees, no date, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22; Letter
from Roger Waggermon to James F. Conway, August 22, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22.
73. UAW Opposes Phillips Hospital Move, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 1979, 3A; Letter from
Cleo LaTessa (CLUW) to James F. Conway, April 3, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23;
Telegram from Eugene Fowler (CORE) to James F. Conway, April 23, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC,
Series 2, Box 23; News Release from the Interfaith Coalition, January 16, 1980, JFC Papers, WUSC,
Series 2, Box 22.
74. Letter from John Christmas and Paul Sanders to James F. Conway, August 9, 1979, JFC Papers, WUSC,
Series 2, Box 22; Letter from Reverend D. C. Fleary to James F. Conway, July 31, 1979, JFC Papers,
WUSC, Series 2, Box 22; Letter from Ridgeway A. Butler to James F. Conway, May 4, 1979, JFC
Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23; Letter from Lorraine Odum to James F. Conway, July 31, 1979, JFC
Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 22; Letter from Mrs. B. White to James F. Conway, September 17, 1979,
JFC Papers, WUSC, Series 2, Box 23.
Much of the history of black working-class struggles remains undocumented due to the informal and
infrapolitical nature of activities outside of recognized political institutions. As Robin Kelley writes,
those who frequented the places of rest, relaxation, recreation and restoration rarely maintained
archives or recorded everyday conversations. Infrapolitics, as defined by James C. Scott, is the cir-
cumspect struggle waged daily by subordinate groups . . . like infrared rays, beyond the visible end of
the spectrum. The mix of institutionalized and protest participation has long been characteristic of black
politics, stemming from the exclusion of blacks from civic and political avenues that prevailed from the
collapse of Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era. See Robin D. G. Kelley, We Are Not What
We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-class Opposition in the Jim Crow South, in The New African
American Urban History, ed. Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1996); see also James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 183.
75. Courtney Barrett, North Siders Indict Mayor for Closing Phillips Hospital, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
June 29, 1980, 16A.
76. Phillips Backers Try Conway in Absentia, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 13, 1980, 11A.
77. Roger Signor, Expanded Services Urged by Phillips Center Staff, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 28,
1980, 1E.
78. Blood Is Spilled as Phillips Protest, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 1980, 12D; Phillips Backers
Claim Success in Petition Drive for April Vote, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 31, 1980, 8A.
79. Roy Malone, Schoemehl Says Voters Would Reopen Phillips, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 11,
1981, 1B; Homer G. and the Campaign, editorial, St. Louis American, February 12, 1981, 6; The
Choice for Mayor, editorial, St. Louis American, February 19, 1981, 6.
80. LaVerne Vaughn, Hospital Issue a Factor in Conways Defeat, St. Louis American, March 5, 1981,
1; Jo Mannies, No Household Word, but a Winner, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 4, 1981, 1B; Jo
Mannies, Schoemehl Pledges to Reopen Phillips, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 4, 1981, 1A; Evarts
Graham, The Citys Budget Crunch, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 1981, 1E.
81. Jo Mannies, State Demands on Phillips May Cause Schoemehl Shift, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March
10, 1981, 1A; Jo Mannies, Schoemehl Team Backs Phillips Plan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 1,
1981, 11A.
82. D. D. Obika, Supporters Submit More Signatures, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 2, 1981, 7B;
Kevin Horrigan, Phillips Proposal Defeated, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 8, 1981, 1A; Another
Hospital Study? editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 2, 1981, 2B; Rally Marks 2nd Anniversary
of Phillips Hospital Closing, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1981, 3A.
83. Gregory Freeman, South Side Aldermen Say Bond Issue Has Little Chance of Passage, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, April 1, 1982, 3A; Gregory Freeman, Mayor, Clay Jeered at Phillips Rally, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1982, 8B.
84. Gregory Freeman, Both Measures Needed to Reopen Homer Phillips Hospital Defeated, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, November 3, 1982, 3D; Gregory Freeman, Blacks Favored Hospital Plans, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, November 4, 1982, 2B.
85. Gregory Freeman, City to Cut Services at Phillips Center, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 5, 1983,
12E; Cut in Doctors at Phillips Center Assailed, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 14, 1984, 3A; Effort
Is Renewed to Reopen Homer G. Phillips as Full-service Hospital, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
November 14, 1984; E. S. Evans, Vote on Phillips Bill Was Final, Zych Says, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
January 8, 1985; Gregory Freeman, Regionals Dying Spurs Barely a Whimper, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, February 26, 1997, 12A.
86. National Register of Historic Places InventoryNomination Form, March 31, 1982, St. Louis Vertical
File, WHMC 694, Box 16.
Bio
Jaclyn Kirouac-Fram is a doctoral student in the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis Univer-
sity. Through an interdisciplinary approach that blends urban studies, visual culture studies, and critical
race theory, her research explores how representations of the metropolis affect contemporary urban policy.

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