Dr. Milton Douglas Quigless, Sr. was born August 16, 1906 in Port Gibson, Mississippi and graduated from Alcorn State College. He played trombone with the Rabbit’s Foot Minstrels, which was based in Port Gibson during its second iteration, and he first came to North Carolina traveling with that show.

He worked as a porter on trains running out of Chicago and across Canada to earn money for medical school, and he eventually earned his degree at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. In 1936 Dr. Milton Douglas Quigless arrived in Tarboro, North Carolina in Edgecombe County to find that the community had a Black pharmacist, but the only Black doctor had died four or five years earlier.

According to Dr. Quigless, Black people were "dying like flies" out in the country. Because of North Carolina's segregation laws, he was denied practicing privileges at Edgecombe Memorial Hospital for almost ten years.

Dr. Quigless treated people in their homes throughout the countryside. When he was not treating people in their homes, an abandoned fish market on the corner of Main and Water streets (now St. Andrews Street) in Tarboro served as his office.

After years of struggle trying to secure a loan to open his own clinic and annually being denied hospital privileges, Peoples Bank in the nearby town of Rocky Mount loaned him $30,000 to establish a clinic.
In 1946, the old fish market was torn down and the two-story brick Quigless Clinic was built on the site. On December 3, 1946, the clinic opened its doors and in its first week the twenty-five bed facility was filled with patients.

Dr. Quigless became well known for his medical skills, especially in the areas of dermatology, weight control, asthma, and allergies. He was well known for his arthritis treatment that he concocted from local herbs, and throughout his medical career he maintained an unusual interest in using both traditional herbal treatments as well as more modern AMA-approved ones.

The Quigless Clinic meets The National Register For Historic Places' criteria A and B for significance in the areas of Social History, Medicine, and Ethnic Heritage/Black.

Dr. Milton Quigless, who is most closely associated with the building at 99 Main Street, established Quigless Clinic as the first fully equipped African American owned and operated medical facility in Edgecombe County.

The property meets Criteria Consideration G because it achieved significance within the last fifty years.
The period of significance begins in 1946, the year the building was completed and opened for business, and concludes in 1975, the year Dr. Quigless discontinued full service inpatient treatment at the clinic. Dr. Quigless continued to treat out-patients at the clinic until shortly before his death in 1997.

The hospital on the second floor closed in 1975 after the state wanted architectural changes that would have meant costly renovations. At the same time, Quigless joined the staff of the new Edgecombe County General Hospital and moved his patients there, but maintained an office in the old hospital until shortly before his death in 1997.

His autobiography was published by his daughter, Carol Quigless. "Looking Back: The Way It Was", in 2009.
Dr. Quigless's papers are collected at East Carolina University, at Laupus Health Sciences Library.

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Photograph of Dr. Quigless and some of the narrative are sourced from Alex Albright's blog.

Photograph of the Quigless Clinic and some of the narrative are sourced from the National Register Of Historic Places.
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