Climbing the Ladder, Chasing the Dream: The History of Homer G. Phillips Hospital
Candace O'Connor
University of Missouri Press
Candace O’Connor draws upon contemporary newspaper articles, institutional records, and dozens of interviews with former staff members to create the first, full history of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, built to serve St. Louis’s rapidly expanding African-American population in 1937 amid a national period of institutional segregation and strong racial prejudice nationwide. For decades, the hospital thrived; by the 1950s, three-quarters of African-American babies in St. Louis were born at "Homer G". O'Connor brings new facts and insights into the life and mysterious murder (still an unsolved case) of the hospital’s namesake, a pioneering Black attorney and civil rights activist who led the effort to build the sorely needed medical facility in the Ville neighborhood.