Statement at the Dedication of the Infantile Paralysis Unit at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

It is a privilege to have even an indirect part in the dedication of this new and important addition to the services of Tuskegee Institute. I am delighted that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis is to be associated with this historic institution.

Since its foundation in 1881 by the great Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee has grown steadily in physical equipment and general influence. It has become a central meeting place for various State, regional and national conferences on all problems pertaining to the Negro. A constant stream of visitors came from all over the world in happier days, and now, unfortunately, must come from lesser distances to study the well-planned vocational training, the practical teaching and the improved community life resulting from the program of this school in the heart of rural Alabama.

Tuskegee is a perfect setting for a hospital unit to care for infantile paralysis victims. Everything here—the rural background, the thousands of disadvantaged people, the hospital and public health programs already in operation, the school as a teaching center dedicated to meeting rural needs, all combine to make this particular location ideal. Here we have not only the physical and human equipment for the enterprise but the need and the opportunity.

The new hospital which we are dedicating today is not Tuskegee's initial venture into furnishing much-needed health services for the Negroes of Alabama. One of the first buildings on the campus was a hospital, a small, poorly equipped, inadequately staffed institution. But from this modest beginning, over long years and with unbelievable effort, came the modern ninety-six bed John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital. Annually since 1912, on the anniversary of Booker T. Washington's birth, over two hundred of the leading white and Negro doctors of the country have met in a clinic during which they work from early morning to late at night on the impoverished sick of the entire area surrounding Tuskegee. During the week of the clinic the roads to Tuskegee are covered with travelers—on foot, by oxen, on mules, by automobile and train- relatives bringing their sick the lame, the halt and the blind—to be made well again. It takes sacrifice and effort for them to come and they make the trip with courage and hope in their hearts, and they are not disappointed.

The John A. Andrew Hospital is one of about one hundred such institutions, mostly in the South, staffed by Negro doctors. Many of these serve as teaching centers, and this hospital has been one of the important examples of improved health services for Negroes in a hospital completely staffed and directed by competent Negro doctors.

In 1937, five beds in the Andrew Hospital were set aside as an orthopedic unit. This beginning was made with the help of the Julius Rosenwald Fund and state and social security money, and now the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis has made possible this new three-story, thirty-five bed unit, completely equipped for the treatment and care of infantile paralysis patients:

The whole project is evidence of the skilled cooperation of Tuskegee's various departments and student body. The plans for the building were drawn up by the school architect. It was erected under the supervision of the building construction specialists of the Institute, aided by the student mechanics, who, along with all the students at Tuskegee, are partially working their way through school.

The hospital will serve as a workshop for student nurses and interns, staffed and controlled by competent Negro personnel. The workshops of Tuskegee will develop splints and other mechanical appliances to help the victims of poliomyelitis.

This new hospital is to be used in the national program of research fostered by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. It will make training available to potential orthopedic surgeons, nurses and technicians. It will keep competent, well-trained doctors in this rural section because they will have available, adequate equipment with which to work. It will make improved medical services available in the event of an outbreak of infantile paralysis.

From this new center at Tuskegee Institute, with its many lay and professional visitors, its medical workers, agricultural agents, teachers and alumni, all dedicated to a better rural South, will come a new knowledge and interest in infantile paralysis and from it we may hope for a new and ever-widening program which will further our efforts in the conquest of this disease.