The Secrets of St. Agnes
By Janell Ross
A retired biology professor uncovers disturbing truths about the past practices of a North Carolina hospital.
Sometimes the best questions, the ones that reveal new truths, are posed outside of the classroom. In the 1990s, Irene Clark was a biology professor at St. Augustine’s College, a historically Black college in Raleigh, N.C. One day, a janitor asked the native Virginian what she knew about the crumbling, windowless stone building at the edge of campus.
“Little did I know where that conversation would lead,” says Clark, who is now retired.
The crumbling building was St. Agnes Hospital, a place once regarded as the best medical facility for Blacks between Hampton, Va., and New Orleans. This was the place where hundreds of Black women learned to be nurses and thousands of Black babies were born. It was a hospital where some of the area’s best-known doctors — Black and White, male and female — got their start. And it was the place where Black boxer Jack Johnson was declared dead.
