Day 14: Provident Hospital and Training School
Provident came to fruition due to the work of people such as aspiring nurse Emma Reynolds, surgeon Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and local churches and donors. Reynolds had been rejected by every nursing school in Chicago, due to her race. She enlisted Dr. Williams to help her get past this racial barrier and they realized that establishing an interracial medical training program was the ideal solution. Reynolds graduated in Provident’s first nursing class and eventually became a doctor, earning her MD in 1895. The down payment for the building that would first house the hospital was paid by the Armour Meat Packing Company at the behest of Reverend Jenkins Jones. Local residents who could not afford to donate were able to donate their time to getting the facility realized. Provident opened with an existing community advisory board to ensure that it stayed cognizant of the needs of its patients.
The hospital went through many expansions and changes throughout its 96 year lifespan. The original building only had space for 12 beds so in 1898 a new, larger building was obtained. In 1894 Dr. Williams, who was serving as chief-of-staff, left Chicago to become surgeon-in-chief at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington DC. In 1933 Provident became affiliated with the University of Chicago and gained an even larger facility, as well as an endowment for the Training School. Eventually Provident would go through a financial crisis and in 1987 declared bankruptcy and closed. It reopened in 1994 as a partnership between Cook County Hospital and Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine. It is no longer a black owned and operated facility but it does continue to serve the surrounding predominately black community.
