This final volume of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital School of Nursing’s yearbook, The Guardian, takes a look at the forty-nine year existence of the nursing school and honors the more than one thousand women who trained as nurses there from 1919 to 1968. This yearbook, which belonged to 1947 graduate Pauline Brown Payne, includes photographs of each of the school’s graduating classes as well as autographs and personal notes from many of the school’s graduates.
The Homer G. Phillips Hospital, named in 1937 for the African American attorney who led the campaign to construct a new hospital building, was the only hospital for African Americans in St. Louis from 1937 until 1955 when city hospitals were desegregated. During its existence, it was one of the only hospitals in the United States where African Americans could train as doctors and nurses. After only 25 years of existence the hospital claimed the distinction of having trained the largest number of black doctors and nurses in the world. In addition to its medical and nursing schools, the hospital also trained x-ray technicians, laboratory technicians, medial record keepers, and even offered training and work to foreign doctors who were denied by other hospitals because of their race. Although once ranked among the ten largest general hospitals in the United States, in 1979 Homer G. Phillips Hospital closed as a full-service hospital when many of its departments were moved to St. Louis City Hospital.
