The Afro American Sons and Daughters Hospital (present condition)
*On this date in 1924, the Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital opened. In Yazoo City, Mississippi, the Afro-American Hospital "offering death and hospitalization benefits to its members."
After being organized, it had 35,000 members by the 1930s. The Afro Americans Sons and Daughters members used the hospital on a fee basis for non-members. There were three medical directors of the hospital during its tenure. Dr. Lloyd Tevis Miller served as the facility's first director. The hospital, which offered major and minor surgery, was a leading healthcare supplier for blacks in Mississippi. It had a low death rate compared to other hospitals that served Blacks in the South during the period.
The group's founder was Thomas J. Huddleston, Sr., a prosperous black entrepreneur and advocate of Booker T. Washington's self-help philosophy. Also, it was a fraternal organization and one of the leading black voluntary associations in the state. The hospital ceased operation in 1966 as a fraternal entity after years of increasingly burdensome regulation, competitive pressure from government and third-party healthcare alternatives, and the migration of younger dues-paying blacks to the North. The Afro-American Sons and Daughters disbanded during the same period.
In 2006, it made the National Register of Historic Places.
