That was before New York City. Then I came down here. As I said, when I
came down here, you were coming down to a community which was really,
again, more advanced. We know that segregation legislation had been
passed, although initially when we opened the health center here, which
at that time occupied the ground level of the old
Page 8
Lincoln Hospital, which is really where the parking lot is. And that had
been in the community since the turn of the century. It dates back to
when Dr. Aaron Moore, who was the first African-American Board-certified
physician to come to Durham--. At about the same time the Duke family
was planning to put up a statue to tobacco workers or Confederate
soldiers. I never quite got the story straight. Anyhow, Dr. Moore
convinced them that the money would be better spent for a hospital.
So the first Lincoln Hospital was actually a wooden structure on Proctor
Street that burned down, and Dr. Moore went about raising the moneys for
the hospital that we tore down. Unfortunately he died about a year
before the hospital opened. You see, at that time we had Lincoln
Hospital, which served primarily the African-American community, and
Watts Hospital, which served the white Durham community. And about the
same time that we opened up, which was mid-September, 1971, the Lincoln
Hospital board of trustees had received a grant from the federal
government, which at that time was finding, at first, neighborhood
health centers, under the Office of Economic Opportunity, and then
community health centers under the Public Health Service Act, which had
been amended.
So basically, we came into being at the same time that Durham County
Hospital Corporation came into existence in order to build the new
hospital, which was an amalgamation of Lincoln and Watts. And as you
know, it was known at that time as Durham County Hospital, now Durham
Regional Hospital, and that hospital opened up in October
of'76, at which time Lincoln and Watts both closed as
in-patient facilities. And the health center then occupied all four
floors of the old building. Part of the requirements of the grant was
that the board of trustees of Lincoln Hospital had funded a
Page 9 community board, which really was responsible for
administrative policy. And the community board is largely, actually,
users of the center, and then those institutions which really the center
works with.
Now when the new hospital opened up, the fiscal grant passed over to the
Durham County Hospital Corporation, but the community board and all of
its responsibilities stayed in place. So basically, we then occupied all
four floors of a very tired old building, and the president of Durham
County Hospital Corporation at that time, Mr. Tom Harrington, and I
agreed that what we needed was a facility that would accommodate an
ambulatory program, not an in-patient. But with a tired old building,
whose elevator didn't always work and you couldn't
always have air conditioning and light at the same time. So basically we
were fortunate enough to be able to raise the funds for the facility
you're in now.
This building we moved into in December of'82. Tore down the
old building, put in the parking lot, and actually only lost two days of
operation. And as you know, like many health centers, we offer a full
range of services, adult medicine, pediatrics, dental care, social work,
mental health, a large pre-natal service, which is a professional
service of Durham Community Health Department, located here ever since
the center opened. And we also have transportation. And we have many,
many specialty clinics and some special clinics like our diabetes
program. We also have a homeless shelter program, mental health care for
the homeless, and a school-based program at Hillside High School, and an
early intervention program which was initially started by the health
department in February of'91.
Page 10 And we
worked with them then and then were able to get Ryan White III funds
available to us, to the health center, and we now have a program
that's operating every day. And as you know, Durham has a
high number of both HIV-infected individuals but also of AIDS cases, so
it's very important that we recognize that need.