Provident Hospital was a small facility, located at 1409 Sixth Avenue in

Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...

. It was founded in 1938 by two African-American physicians, Von D. Mizell and James Sistrunk; none of the existing hospitals in Fort Lauderdale would accept African-American patients.

In 1937, a young black man named John McBride was shot in the stomach by a car full of white men rumored to be members of the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
. Hospitals in the area near the Pompano Beach shooting at first refused to admit him. A black physician, Dr. Von D. Mizell, ultimately persuaded one of them to take him in. But the hospital later insisted on moving McBride to a rundown sanitarium, where he soon died.

The hospital was torn down by the city after the city's hospitals were integrated after passage of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

, and Medicare refused to support segregated hospitals. The building was replaced by the Mizell Center, a

community center Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

References

{{reflist Demolished buildings and structures in Florida Historically black hospitals in the United States History of Fort Lauderdale, Florida African-American history of Florida Hospitals established in 1938 Defunct hospitals in Florida 1938 establishments in Florida 1960s disestablishments in Florida

See also

References