African-American hospital remembered as new children's hospital rises

For James Tolley, M.D., the old McClennan-Banks Memorial Hospital in downtown Charleston was more than a place for African-Americans to go in a segregated era to get medical care. It was where his cousin and mentor, Thomas Carr McFall, M.D., was medical director, inspiring Tolley to follow in his footsteps and go to medical school.

“Dr. McFall was born and raised here in Charleston,” Tolley said. “When I was a kid, his office was on Morris Street around the corner from a synagogue, and we lived on Cannon Street next to the YMCA. His family goes back to the early part of the last century. They had a pharmacy at Morris and Smith Streets. He was an internist, and his brother, Allen, was a pharmacist.”

Those memories are top of mind for Tolley as the Medical University of South Carolina prepares to break ground for the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital on August 12. Part of the new hospital will be on the site of the last building to bear the McClennan-Banks name, the McClennan-Banks Ambulatory Care Facility. The actual McClennan-Banks Memorial Hospital, which stood where MUSC’s Ashley River Tower now stands, closed in 1976.

“By that time, African-American doctors and nurses were accepted and allowed to practice in the majority hospitals,” Tolley said. 

Less than 10 years after the McClennan-Banks Memorial Hospital closed, Tolley graduated from the College of Medicine at MUSC. He’s now an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Susan Hoffius, curator of the Waring Library at MUSC, said McClennan-Banks was the final incarnation of a hospital started back in 1897, originally called both the Hospital and Training School for Nurses and the Cannon Street Hospital.

“There were a number of African-American physicians and nurses involved in setting that up. The two principal ones were Alonzo McClennan and Anna DeCosta Banks,” Hoffius said. 

They were an impressive team. McClennan, born in 1855, earned medical and pharmacy degrees. He also helped run the hospital, created a statewide African-American medical society and opened the first black-owned pharmacy in Charleston.

Banks, born 14 years later, was an accomplished nurse who was passionate about helping people. She was quoted by the Southern Workman publication as saying, “The colored people have long felt the need of a hospital where their sick can be properly cared for. Many of them have simply died for want of attention.”

Tolley said the new children’s hospital at the intersection of Calhoun Street and Courtenay Drive will continue an important part of the old hospital’s mission. 

“The area still serves the needs of the Charleston community and the state,” Tolley said. “I think the Medical University, being a teaching institution and the premiere medical institution in our area, serves everybody. That was the purpose of the old hospital, to serve and provide care for anyone who comes through the door.”

The MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital, scheduled to open in 2019, will replace the 29-year-old Children’s Hospital currently located on Ashley Avenue, providing much needed space for the thousands of patients and families served by MUSC each year.  

The new facility will provide more spacious, family-centered amenities and expanded services, including an expanded neonatal intensive care unit, an entire floor dedicated to the care of children with cancer and the most comprehensive pediatric heart center in South Carolina.

Hoffius said MUSC is honoring the memory of McClennan-Banks through exhibits such as this one offered online by the Waring Library and a display on the Ashley River Tower’s fourth floor.

“As an institution, MUSC is trying to preserve the history of McClennan-Banks even as it has to accommodate the demands of current health care facilities. Even though these buildings have been changed and torn down, we’re not tearing down the memories of those buildings. In fact, we’re going out of our way to make sure they’re still integrated into the new buildings so people don’t forget what was there before.”

Tolley said that’s important as MUSC looks to the future. “Dr. Alonzo McClennan and nurse Anna Banks devoted their lives to providing the best quality of care to the community. This site has and will continue to serve that purpose. 

“It is truly fitting that we remember their dedication as well as the dedication of all who provided care at this site, by ensuring that this history continues to move forward as we continue to make things possible.”