In 1922, Blue Ridge Hospital and Training School was established at 186 Fayetteville St. in West Asheville (later moving to 18 Clingman Ave., Asheville) to engage African American nurses and doctors and provide medical, surgical and obstetric care to African Americans.

Blue Ridge Hospital closed in 1929, a victim of the racist manipulation to not fund it by local city and county government officials.

In 1940, Mission Hospital had only 18 beds for Black patients, the book documents. Dr. Mary Francis Shuford then established a clinic for African Americans that, in 1943, grew into the Asheville Colored Hospital and, in 1951, merged with Mission.
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Excerpts from the book:
African American Hospitals in North Carolina: 39 Institutional Histories 1880-1967
By Phoebe Ann Pollitt
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Asheville, Buncombe County, p. 95

Blue Ridge Hospital and Nursing School 1922-1928

The closing of Torrence Hospital in 1915 and the Circle Terrace Sanatorium in 1917, meant African Americans in Buncombe County were again without a hospital where their doctors of choice could treat them. A group of African American citizens in Buncombe County established the Blue Ridge Hospital and School of Nursing in 1922. The hospital began without any backing from White philanthropists or organizations. Nursing Superintendent Ruby Woodbury (n.d.) explained the hospital's primary objectives:

"The hospitalizations of Negroes seeking surgical or medical treatment under the care and skill of their own doctors, to provide an opportunity for colored physicians to improve their technique and skill in keeping with the best medical and surgical thought of the day, to provide an opportunity for the efficient training of nurses and to serve as a nucleus for the promotion and dissemination of knowledge pertaining to hygiene and sanitation[p.1]"

No official papers have been found related to the school of nursing documenting its policies, curriculum or teaching staff. A single photograph identifies Flossie Metz, Lula Long, and Kathleen Wills as the first three graduates of the nursing program in 1925.
North Carolina Board of Nursing records list Geneva Sitrena Collins (1930), Lois Rice Cunningham (1929), and Maude Beulah Du Pont (1926) as the three other graduates of Blue Ridge Hospital's nursing program (First graduates, 1925).

Superintendent of Nursing Woodbury Promoted Blue Ridge Hospital. In a pamphlet about the hospital, she wrote:
"The hospital is prepared to care for all the colored work in the city and county. The Mission Hospital is the only White institution in the city having colored wards. To be consistent in our aims and institutional life, we feel that the Blue Ridge Hospital is the logical place for all Negroes needing hospital treatment in the city and county. As a rule, the colored nurse is better qualified by nature to minister to her own race; with her there can be no thought of prejudice[Woodbury, n.d. p.2]."

The opening of Blue Ridge Hospital and School of Nursing demonstrated the dedication of Asheville's African American citizens to improve their community. An article in the Asheville Citizen reported that the new hospital cost $30,000 and opened with an indebtness of $16,000. With its combination of private rooms, wards, sun porches, the hospital was well equipped to accommodate as many as 30 patients ("Formal Opening" 1922).

The hospital had an operating room and dietary kitchen. Six African American physicians: Doctors White, Louis N. Gallego, Iee Otis Miller, John Walker Holt, a 1917 graduate of Leonard Medical School, Thompson, John Wakefield Walker, a 1902 graduate of Leonard Medical School, and Ruben H. Bryant, an 1889 graduate of Leonard Medical School, constituted the medical staff.

Dr. Bryant served as Chief of Staff (Rives,1922). The hospital opened in 1922 with Nurse Sadie Woods as its first Superintendent.
Later Nursing Superintendents included Jeanette May (1924-25), Lula Long (1926), Mattie Sears (1927), Ruby Woodbury (1928), and Flossie Metz (1929-1930).
Nurse Idell Tate was the night superintendent (Asheville City Directories, 1922-1930).

Hospital authorities asked the public to donate bed linens, food, and other helpful items ("Colored Hospital formally opened," 1922).
Local women founded both "The Hospital Guild" and the "Loyal Blue Club" to assist the hospital and its patients. Superintendent Woodbury (n.d.) wrote about the clubs in a brochure about the hospital:
"These clubs are composed of women whose services have been unsparing, and whose attention has been painstaking in rendering whatsoever aid is possible in caring for its [the hospital's] needs. [Woodbury, n.d., p.2.].

In its first five years, 1,801 patients were treated at Blue Ridge Hospital. There were 854 surgical cases, 130 obstetrical cases, and 817 medical cases. The mortality rate was a very low 5 percent. The hospital charged patients for services, but no one was turned away due to lack of funds (Woodbury, n.d.). The statistics clearly indicate that the need for the hospital was great.

Despite the value and use of the Blue Ridge Hospital, it did not receive needed support from municipal funds. Both the Asheville City and Buncombe County governments allocate one dollar a day for charity care for impoverished residents needing hospitalization.

Unfortunately, despite repeated requests from the administrators of Blue Ridge Hospital to be designated as the official charity hospital for African American citizens and there, receive the fees of the city and county government for indigent patients, both governmental bodies refused this request. Instead, they reimbursed only Mission Hospital for charity care (Marlowe, 2004). Blue Ridge Hospital could not raise enough money to both repay its debt and subsidize care for many of its patients.

In 1928 it closed its doors. Dr. L.O. Miller, a physician at Blue Ridge at the time of its closing, laid significant blame at the feet of local government officials.
He stated: "Our failure to interest the city and county officials to give us indigent patients, and the apparent lack of interest of Negro leaders in the hospital, forced us to close the institution" ("Close doors of Negro Hospital," 1930, p. 58).

Clearly, there were complex political and racial dynamics at play. After Blue Ridge Hospital closed, the only hospital care available to African American Buncombe County residents was delivered in the segregated basement Negro Ward in Mission Hospital.
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