It was started by Dr. Miles Vandahurst Lynk, who also founded the National Medical Association, a parallel organization to the AMA. The school graduated 155 African American physicians whose practice was based at small hospitals, such as Collins Chapel and Mercy Hospital here in Memphis. The school was forced to close as a result of the Flexner Report, which concluded that America did not need medical schools focused on training African Americans. As a result, no new African American physicians graduated in Memphis until the late 1960s. Students from Memphis went to Howard in Washington, D.C. or Meharry in Nashville and never returned home. Thankfully, Meharry Medical School and the University of Tennessee are working to change that reality, but we in Memphis should hold up the work of Dr. Lynk and those he trained during the time of Jim Crow in the Mid-South.
This is Dr. Scott Morris for Church Health.
