Hawkins writes that the 1910s found the sanitarium suffering from a lack of funds and resources. Donors, mostly Northerners, kept the sanitarium afloat, but only just. Scruggs’ dedication to serve African Americans in need meant he worked tirelessly to raise money for the cause - no small task in a country just 32 years removed from the Civil War. Others were Black people who worked at the area’s resorts and lived on the neighborhoods surrounding the sanitarium - an area that would continue to grow, and in 1923 be incorporated as the town of West Southern Pines. Some patients traveled for a chance to be treated by him. Scruggs charged little and achieved a 66 percent “cure rate” (though exactly what that means isn’t clear) all while maintaining his private practice in Raleigh, a 68-mile drive before cars were exactly a thing.įor 15 years, Hawkins writes, Scruggs’ efforts at Pickford’s “modest and neat” facility were heralded far and wide. Hawkins writes that the celebration was attended by 2,000 people - a huge crowd for a ribbon cutting even by today’s standards. On September 10, 1897, he held the grand opening for his Pickford Sanitarium, named for his longtime benefactors who also helped finance some of its construction. Scruggs bought the land on New York Avenue from Patrick and started building. We could spend the rest of the article listing Scruggs’ accomplishments, but let’s take you back to Southern Pines. He became a licensed pharmacist and opened a private practice. ![]() He then became the first African-American to pass the North Carolina medical exam. At age 20, Scruggs befriended businessman Charles Pickford, who helped finance his education, starting with Baptist seminary.Īt 29, Scruggs was in the first graduating class of the Leonard Medical College of Shaw University. Born to former slaves in Virginia, he spent almost every day of his childhood doing farm work - and almost every night, reading whatever he could get his hands on. ![]() The Pickford Sanitarium would be the first. In the segregated South, Hawkins reports, no such place existed for Black people, who were four times as likely as whites to die of the disease. Scruggs, a Raleigh physician, had been in search of a place to build a sanitarium where African-Americans could live while being treated for Tuberculosis.
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