Saint Agnes Hospital

Saint Agnes Hospital is both a hospital and medical professional training institute that operated in the 19th and 20th centuries located on what was then Saint Augustine College in Raleigh, NC. The hospital was primarily founded out of a need in the Black community for quality healthcare. Healthcare during this time was segregated under the same Jim Crow laws as we think about with other institutions like schools. This resulted in much of the Black community being turned away from white-people-only institutions leaving them with little to no available healthcare. Thus, Saint Agnes Hospital was established, through the generosity of many people and organizations, to help combat this issue, and it would also eventually grow into one of the premier nurse training schools in the Southeast. Saint Agnes Hospital currently is nothing more than a ruin these days, but its legacy still has a major impact on the local community within Raleigh and for the entirety of North Carolina history.

St. Agnes Hospital was constructed on the campus of St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1896. The hospital was founded by Sara Hunter, the wife of the fourth principal of St. Augustine College, in response to a desperate need in the Black community for adequate healthcare. Mrs. Hunter took her cause to a conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she presented to a women’s auxiliary there. This campaign resulted in the hospital receiving a funding of $1,100 with $500 coming from the women’s auxiliary and $600 coming from T.L. Collins who is responsible for the hospital’s name by asking for it to be dedicated to the memory of his late wife, Agnes. These donations prompted the saying that “St. Agnes Hospital was founded with faith, love, and $1,100.” The first hospital’s home was set up within the Sutton House, the house of the third principal of St. Augustine College. Unfortunately, this would not be their final home as a fire broke out within the first few years of operation forcing the construction of a new four-story stone facility (the one that still stands to this day) with a separate frame building to house their nurses. The building was constructed entirely by students from St. Augustine under the supervision of clergymen. From here, St. Agnes Hospital would go on to become an essential establishment for the healthcare of an entire region while also growing into a respected institution for training nurses. Also from here, it would endure numerous struggles that would push it to the edge including two more fires, a growing number of patients, the Great Depression, and two World Wars.

The main source, though, of many of those struggles were in regard to its finances. They only used tuition from the medical professionals in training along with only requiring the bare minimum from patients for the hospital to operate meaning they relied very heavily on donations in times of need. This lack of steady funding would only create headaches as incidents and larger events out of their control continued to happen throughout the early 1900s. In 1928, however, the hospital received an “A” rating from the NC Board of Nurse Examiners and was also approved for the instruction of interns and placed on the approved list of the American College of Surgeons. This would become what was seen as the golden era for St. Agnes Hospital after being on the tail-end of a devastating fire just in 1926. Over the next 30 years, the hospital continued to grow and advance its training programs and was viewed from all over as a place of high-quality education (it also continuously received an “A” rating on examinations). However, the financial issues may have improved but never truly disappeared even with the eventual government funding they started to receive post-New Deal policies. This unfortunately caused the facility to not match the standard of their education as it was decaying and in need of major renovation. Instead of renovating, however, the upsurge of state-funded educational programs for nurses and the desire to have a facility for all people not just white or Black resulted in the emergence of the new Wake Medical Center and the closing of St. Agnes Hospital in 1961. This was not the end of St. Agnes’ legacy, however, as it continues to be an important symbol of the Jim Crow era for the Black community of Wake County and beyond. The building may lie in ruins now, but its importance to local history is still as strong as ever.

Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” did not just apply to institutions like schools, but also very much so to healthcare. White people only hospitals were quite abundant throughout the United States in the 19^th century including Raleigh’s very own Rex Hospital. The problem that St. Agnes Hospital and Mrs. Sara Hunter sought to remedy was the turning away of Black people from the adequate healthcare they deserved. As one newspaper article, the News and Observer, from 1896 put it: “The hospital has grown out of a felt need. Many colored people die from sheer want of attention in time of illness.” In other words, these deaths were needless and easily avoidable. It is even said that St. Agnes Hospital was the only hospital to serve the Black community in any kind of adequate manner from Washington D.C. to New Orleans. This hospital did not only serve as a saving grace in terms of healthcare, but it also served to give Black men and women the opportunity to make a decent wage as healthcare professionals in a time where this was not easy to do so. The significance of the development of the nursing school into what it became before its closure cannot be understated. This gave a struggling community job security and a way to have their needs fulfilled in a manner of many different ways. Further, St. Agnes Hospital could even be viewed as a microcosm of the desire for co-existence between white and Black people during a time of still very heated contention. Many of the founding members and medical professionals of this hospital were white and many of them partook in training Black medical professionals. In the end, St. Agnes Hospital played an incredibly important role in North Carolina’s history, and further, even the history of the United States as a whole.

In the present day, St. Agnes Hospital only looks like a shell of its former self as it is in ruins now. The hospital had brief purposes for St. Augustine, but that did not last long and has been mostly void of any purposes over the last 60 years. However, this hasn’t ended the conversation and desire to reinvigorate this historic hospital. The ruins can still be visited to this day and going there you can witness history right alongside the new additions created by local artists looking to retell the hospital’s story. One organization called VAE Raleigh, which serves as a hub for a diverse network of artists in Raleigh, NC, created a project called Envision Saint Agnes Hospital. The purpose of the project is to “create a public art installation, designed by Saint Augustine University students, that tells the story of Saint Agnes Hospital.” This isn’t the only way the local community has attempted to keep the story of St. Agnes Hospital alive as many historians and universities continue to document and teach about the importance of the hospital. For example in 2013, North Carolina State University’s African American Cultural Center held a panel for their documentary on St. Agnes Hospital displaying interviews of those who either worked in the hospital, were a patient there, or understood the vast impact it had on the local community. The documentary can still be viewed through the link displayed on this page. Finally, there have been talks about the hospital being renovated to be used for various different purposes, and while none of these have come to be unfortunately, there is still some hope as St. Augustine University has showed interest in reinvigorating St. Agnes Hospital (the link about this can be found below). All of these examples show the desire for not letting St. Agnes Hospital to be forgotten. This should only be the beginning as this hospital could further serve an important function by passing on the knowledge of it to the next generation. St. Agnes Hospital should have a place in the North Carolina classroom as a local example of the reality of how the United States used to be and how people came together to beat the odds stacked against them.

Within the North Carolina Standards for American History, there is a clause labeled AH.B.1.6 which states: “explain how the experiences and achievements of minorities and marginalized peoples have contributed to American identity over time in terms of the struggle against bias, racism, oppression, and discrimination.” There isn’t a better example of this standard than with St. Agnes Hospital. The hospital exemplifies the way communities have come together to battle hardships all over America and fight for change. This is an example of Jim Crow laws that would be close to home for North Carolina students. It would also give students an example of the perseverance of those persecuted against for simply wanting basic human rights like healthcare. Ultimately, educators have the opportunity to keep the story of St. Agnes Hospital alive for the next generation, and it even fits perfectly into the American History curriculum because of the microcosm of United States history it represents.

Appalachian State University. (2022). North Carolina Nursing History: St. Agnes Hospital School of Nursing. https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/institution/st-agnes-hospital-school-nursing.

Cobb, W. M. (1961). Saint Agnes Hospital, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1896-1961. Journal of the National Medical Association, 53(5), 439-446. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2641988/pdf/jnma00693-0004.pdf.

Leah, H. (2019, February 3rd). "Raleigh's St. Agnes Hospital, Serving the African American Community When No others Would." ABC 11 Eyewitness News. https://abc11.com/st-agnes-history-civil-rights-raleigh/3013554/.

Pollitt, P., & Reese, C. N. (2000). St. Agnes School of Nursing: A Legacy of Hope. ABNF Journal, 11(1), 3-6. https://login.proxy006.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/218874747.

Saint Agnes Hospital (St. Augustine's College Campus). (Circa 1980). https://rhdc.org/sites/default/files/St.%20Agnes%20Hospital%20Landmark%20Report_web.pdf.

News and Observer. (1896, October 18th). St. Agnes Hospital. https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?institutionId=0&user=342968&id=78557991&width=557&height=774&crop=2976_297_937_1326&rotation=0&brightness=0&contrast=0&invert=0&ts=1572571226&h=08cf917fad4b21ec122ca31ec740935c.