Equity as Community Cure

Equity in opportunity, access, and health care have challenged the American dream since the country’s earliest days and two Chattanooga women connect this thread and the spirit of community in a uniquely Chattanooga way.

Bessie Smith changed the world of music but began her career busking on Chattanooga’s 9 th Street.

Bessie Smith was an international star, trailblazing woman, musician, entertainer, and iconic influencer over a century before people even knew what an influencer was. She was a hero to women, people of color, musicians, and Americans, a woman who celebrated the soul of her people in the sounds of her music, and who lived freely, bravely, and honestly.

Her contralto and showmanship launched her from poverty to international fame and before the Great Depression, Bessie was the highest-paid black entertainer in the world. Songs like “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” and “Backwater Blues,” were accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, including Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, and Benny Goodman. Bessie Smith was one of the biggest stars of the 1920’s and today her legacy is curated at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center with interactive experiences that introduce guests to Chattanooga’s African American history and the fascinating story of Bessie’s life.

Born in Chattanooga in 1892, Bessie lived in an area on the Tennessee River known as Blue Goose Hollow, today commemorated at the end of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard with a sculpture on the Tennessee Riverwalk that celebrates her vibrant spirit. In Bessie’s day that road led to the ‘The Big Nine,’ a robust music district boasting Mohogany Hall, and the Martin Hotel.

Bessie and her siblings, orphans who lost both parents, scraped to survive. Bessie and older brother Andrew performed on The Big Nine and outside the White Elephant Saloon at 13th and Elm, singing and dancing in an art that we now celebrate as busking. After her older brother Clarence was recruited by Moses Stokes to perform with Ma Rainey, Bessie yearned for her break.

In 1912 Bessie finally got her chance, joining the troupe as a dancer and beginning a crash course in learning stage presence from the celebrated performer Ma Rainey. Launching on her own at Atlanta’s “81 Theater” Bessie would become the Queen of the Blues and then the Empress of the Blues, celebrated as the most popular female musician of the 1930s.

Chattanooga’s “Big Nine” has a long history with artists like Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Howling Wolf, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, Wilson Pickett, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, and James Brown known to finish shows at white venues and go to the joints on Ninth Street, checking out local acts and even joining them on stage.

Internationally famous and reputed as the highest-paid performer of her time, Bessie was taking the world by storm, popularizing jazz and blues with her iconic voice, spirit, and zest for life. Though she was not inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 1989, Bessie led the way for female artists, gave voice to a new genre of music, and became a music icon, film star, and recording star in a time when America was still segregated.

Bessie’s iconic contralto voice recorded well from her first session, conducted when recordings were made acoustically. The advent of electrical recording made the power of her voice even more evident. Her first electrical recording was “Cake Walking Babies [From Home]” recorded on May 5, 1925, beginning a revival to her career.

On September 26, 1937, en route to Clarksdale, Mississippi, from Memphis, Tennessee, Bessie was critically injured when her love interest, Richard Morgan, misjudged speed and collided with a slow-moving truck. Dr. Hugh Smith was the first on the scene and began treatment, noting major traumatic crushing injuries and a right arm that was almost severed at the elbow. Dr. Smith and his fishing partner, Henry Broughton, moved her to the side of the road and called for an ambulance, watching her life ebb as they waited. When they finally gave up hope and loaded her into Dr. Smith’s car fate would deal a deadly blow as a young couple in a speeding car crashed into them.

Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, was finally taken to the G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness, a legend lost before her time. It has long been suggested that if the racial barriers to health care had not existed, Bessie Smith would have survived. Imagine how she could have added to her legacy had she had equitable access to health care on that frightening night?

Twelve years before Bessie Smith’s untimely death a strong and determined woman made her home in Chattanooga and changed the relationship between race and equity in health care for a city that had become a refuge for people of color and a home to a robust community.

Emma Rochelle Wheeler established Walden Hospital in 1915 and paid the construction loan off in three years. The building still stands today!

Emma Rochelle Wheeler grew up in Florida and became intrigued with medicine as a young child when a sudden illness struck and she met a doctor who would both save her and become a lifelong mentor, encouraging her education and career dreams. Later, a young widow, Emma attended Walden University, and, in 1905, her childhood dreams became reality when she graduated from Walden University's Meharry Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical College. She married Dr. John Wheeler, and they moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In 1915 Emma became the first female, African American physician in the city when she and John opened Walden Hospital on the corner of East 8th and Douglas Streets, near UTC in downtown Chattanooga. Emma’s hospital had thirty beds with nine private rooms, a twelve-bed room, and three wings, including Surgery, Maternity, and Nursery. Walden Hospital served the black community, offering excellent medical care, during a time when the alternative was being cared for in the basement of white hospitals. Emma and John were able to hire seventeen doctors and surgeons as well as two or three nurses, paying off the entire building debt in three years.

Emma and her husband, John, trained young, aspiring African American nurses and, she served as teacher, surgeon, and superintendent of Walden Hospital, also founding the Nurse Services Club of Chattanooga. Members of the club paid a fee, allowing them a two-week stay in the hospital at any time, as well as the care of a nurse in their home after being released from the hospital. Her club offered pre-paid, reasonably priced healthcare for underprivileged African Americans in Chattanooga and was the first of its kind.

An avid advocate for women, Emma was part of the founding circle of the Pi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Chattanooga’s first AKA chapter and in 1949, the Chattanooga branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) voted Dr. Wheeler the “Negro Mother of the Year.”

Chattanooga has been a city on the cusp of change and at the crux of historical moments since the earliest days of European contact and the inception of America, so it is no surprise that when we consider health care two Chattanooga women’s stories illustrate the impact of equity.

Visit our friends at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center to learn more about these women and their place in American history. https://www.bessiesmithcc.org/

by Jennifer Ley Crutchfield