Cora Anderson Negro Hospital

KXXV traced the hospital to a public appeal in 1952, during segregation, when posters around Temple asked whether residents wanted a modern hospital for Black patients and called a mass meeting at Wayman Chapel A.M.E. Church. The Temple Negro Hospital Committee led the drive. Cora Anderson, a Black businesswoman and philanthropist, gave $1,098 and then $1,500 so it could finish on time. Ella Townsend, who had her tonsils out there as a girl, recalled that patients no longer had to wait in the basement at King's Daughters Hospital.

What the plaque says

Cora Anderson Negro Hospital Officially opened on May 17, 1953, Cora Anderson Negro Hospital offered medical services to the growing African American population of Temple and Greater Bell County. The hospital featured 16 patient rooms and a surgical suite. It was located only two blocks from Scott & White Hospital and Clinic, thereby providing African American patients access to technology and specialized care that was previously denied to them. The hospital was administered by a Public Advisory Board comprised of an equal number of African American and white citizens. Final decisions were made by the Scott & White Board of Trustees. U. S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson served on the Scott & White Board of Trustees at this time and partook in the fundraising campaign. Cora Woods Campbell Anderson, the largest individual donor to the campaign, was known community-wide for her commitment to helping out college students and families with financial issues and generously giving to the Negro Hospital Project. The Advisory Board unanimously agreed to name the facility after her. Once the facility opened, Scott & White physicians provided care, but the nurses and support staff were overwhelmingly African American. The hospital operated until December 1963 when Scott & White moved to integrate facilities at South 31st Street. In late 1969, the Bell County Commissioners Court acquired the building. Now called the Cora Anderson Building of the Bell County Health District, the Public Health District runs the facility as an outpatient health clinic, though it preserves the building's original mission of serving the poor and disenfranchised. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 0.3 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Mother Neff State Park — 18 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 28 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.

More markers nearby

• Temple Daily Telegram — 0.4 mi
• W. Goodrich Jones (1860-1950) — 0.5 mi
• Site of the Organization of the Texas Forestry Association — 0.5 mi
• City of Temple — 0.5 mi