Lincoln Health Center's history and mission
By the time Schmidt returned to Durham in 1971, desegregation rulings had changed the community. She assumed the role of executive director of the Lincoln Health Center, determined to use this new freedom to serve all of Durham's residents, regardless of race or class. Schmidt also describes the history of the health center.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Evelyn Schmidt, February 9, 1999. Interview K-0137. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ANN KAPLAN:
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So then, your time in Pennsylvania, that was before you went to New York
City?
- EVELYN SCHMIDT:
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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
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
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. 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.
- ANN KAPLAN:
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Can I pause here for a sec? First, you're telling me the
history of the health center, which is completely useful and very good
for the interview. Could you tell me what year did you come on board and
what was your professional role?
- EVELYN SCHMIDT:
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All right. I came on board September 1, 1971, and I came on as the
executive director.
- ANN KAPLAN:
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When the health center was created.
- EVELYN SCHMIDT:
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No. Actually the grant was awarded in mid-June of 1970, and staff had
been hired. I was actually the last person hired, and then we became
operational mid-September of '71. At that time, when I came,
I was executive director, but I was also the only pediatrician. So as we
grew, fortunately very, very soon, Dr. Samuel Katz, who was the head of
pediatrics at Duke, came over and said, "Anything I can do to
help you? Would you like to have a resident in January?" And I
said, "That would be great."
[Laughter] So that was our first affiliation with Duke in
the sense of residents. We now have them not only in pediatrics but
medicine, so that it's an elective in community psychiatry in
the P.A. program.
So we have nursing school students from all the nursing schools around.
But the very first one was really very critical at the time with the
offer of some pediatric assistance.
- ANN KAPLAN:
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OK, great. Just to get your impressions of the community from your
perspective of someone who had been at Duke and who had been away and
who had come back and now was based much more in the Durham community
rather than just with Duke.
- EVELYN SCHMIDT:
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That's exactly right. Yes, I was on the other side of town.
That's exactly right. And although you now had legislation
which said that people could go anywhere, as far as health care was
concerned, which was a concern of both the professional and lay
community who started Lincoln Community Health Center, and very much Dr.
Charles Watts, who actually was the very first Board-certified
African-American surgeon to come and practice in Durham in 1950.
Basically, you still saw the needs of large groups of individuals who
didn't have access to health care as they should have access
to health care. And I think that's the reason that health
centers were started, was that no one regardless of any barrier--and the
barrier shouldn't be race, it shouldn't be
ethnicity, it shouldn't be money.
- ANN KAPLAN:
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And it was all of those things.
- EVELYN SCHMIDT:
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All of those, in many, many ways. In terms of the basic health needs,
which provided not just emergency care but ongoing care. You
don't cure anything, or you don't treat adequately
anything just on an emergency basis. You maintain life, but you
don't really necessarily treat.