Dr. Walter Ree McMillan

McMillan built because Dallas hospitals closed their doors. St. Paul's Sanitarium, open since 1898, gave Black doctors no admitting privileges until 1954, when five received limited access and could place a total of 32 patients. His sanitarium on Hall Street offered surgery, doctors' offices, a druggist, an insurance company and a barbershop, and he made room for colleagues including Pinkston, Flowers, Green and Brown. He also raised money for the Moorland YMCA's 1931 building. His grandson Ernest McMillan has spoken of the backlash he faced from people who feared educated Black men.

What the plaque says

Dr. Walter Ree McMillan A pioneering healthcare provider in Dallas, Dr. Walter R. McMillan (1873-1958) was born in Quitman (Wood County) to James McMillan and Jane Regan-McMillan. He attended Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, concentrating in obstetrics. After graduating in 1909, Dr. McMillan moved to Dallas to start his own practice, sharing an office with attorney J.L. Turner Sr. He met and married Meirriell Vain Thomas (1892-1967). The marriage produced two sons, Walter C. and Marion. His four children from a previous marriage to Aria Brinkley, Walter, Lillie May, Xenophon and Ollie Lee, joined the couple in Dallas. Ollie Lee followed her father into medicine, becoming the first African American nurse to be hired by Parkland Hospital in 1931. During the Jim Crow Era, African Americans faced significant discrimination in the healthcare field, whether as patients or staff. Dallas' existing medical facilities for African Americans were overloaded. Seeing the need, Dr. McMillan sought to expand healthcare opportunities. In 1923, he opened McMillan Sanitarium, a two-story building housing doctor's offices, surgical complex and insurance offices, in addition to other businesses. Along with serving patients, McMillan Sanitarium allowed Dr. McMillan to mentor African American doctors, surgeons and nurses on staff before establishing practices of their own, with notable examples including Dr. L.G. Pinkston, Dr. W.K. Flowers, Dr. William Green and Dr. Samuel L. Brown. In addition to medical interests, Dr. McMillan was active in the civic arena. He was a trustee of St. Paul Methodist Church on Routh Street and helped to develop the Moorland Branch of the YMCA. As one of a handful of practicing African American doctors, Walter McMillan was an influential healthcare provider in the city of Dallas. (2023)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 1.0 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 1.6 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.9 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.3 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Freedman's Cemetery — steps away
• Temple Emanu-El Cemetery — 0.2 mi
• Colonel C. C. Slaughter — 0.2 mi
• Greenwood Cemetery — 0.3 mi