Founding a School

In the fall of 1896, Dr. Alonzo C. McClennan called together the black physicians of Charleston to discuss the possibility of establishing a nurses' training school for black women. At that time no nurse training was available in Charleston, even for whites. Six of the seven physicians agreed to cooperate in the undertaking. They arranged to use a classroom in the Wallingford School and began a course of lectures there in January of 1897. They intended to give practical training to the nurses by placing them in charge of cases connected to their practice, but this proved unworkable, and it became obvious that the school could not produce competent nurses without a hospital setting to complement the classroom instruction. They asked city of Charleston to permit their students to staff a ward in the City Hospital, but the city refused. At that point they realized that to gain access to a hospital they must create their own, and so they did. They recruited prominent members of the Charleston community, both black and white, to serve on their advisory board, created an executive committee, and proceeded to raise or pledge the funds necessary to purchase and maintain the properties at 135 Cannon Street where the Hospital and Training School for Nurses opened on October 4, 1897. It was a proud day for the black community of Charleston.