Working Benevolent Society Hospital

Front: The Working Benevolent Society Hospital, first known as St. Luke Colored Hospital, was a two-story frame building standing here at the corner of Green Avenue and Jenkins Street. Founded in 1920, it served blacks in Greenville for twenty-eight years. The Working Benevolent Grand Lodge of S.C., at Broad and Fall Streets in Greenville, operated the hospital from 1928 until it closed in 1948. Reverse: The hospital, described at its opening as “one of the most modern institutions in the South for colored people,” had three wards and twenty-two beds in semi-private and private rooms. Mrs. M.H. Bright was the first superintendent. A registered nurse and a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, she had been superintendent of the Institute hospital. Most of the superintendents after her were nurses as well.