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THE TEXAS GULF HISTORICAL
AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
The Journal of the Texas Gulf Historical Society
and the Lamar University History Department
Volume 57: 2021
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Dr. Edward D. Sprott and family about 1964. The Rolfe and Gary Christopher Collection,
Special Collections, Mary and John Gray Library, Lamar University.
Tina M. Kibbe
Dr. Edward D. Sprott Jr.
Civil Rights Activist and Champion for Equal Access to Healthcare
On Monday, January 22, 1962, Dr. Edward D. “Ed”
or “E.D.” Sprott Jr. used his lunch time to drive
to Sol White’s Pharmacy to pick up medication
for a patient. Intending to make a quick run inside, he
parked in front of the White Building on Forsythe Street
in downtown Beaumont. When he returned to his car a
short time later, he saw a police ofcer placing a ticket on
his windshield for “parking in a prohibited zone.” Sprott,
who was African American, had been denied the special
license plate that identied him as a physician. The ofcer
and his partner refused to listen to an explanation, and when
Sprott expressed his frustration, they grabbed the doctor,
placed him in handcuffs, and forced him into the back of
their squad car. He was eventually charged with using abusive
language, disturbing the peace, and aggravated assault on a
police ofcer. His arrest illustrated how healthcare services
for African Americans was inextricably linked to the broader
civil rights movement.1
1. Dana Sprott Cunningham telephone interview with the author, May 30,
2019; The Beaumont Enterprise, January 23, 1962 (hereafter BE).
8
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Historians have produced scholarship on civil rights activism
involving the desegregation of recreational and educational
spaces in the region, but only a few have examined how
segregation affected the delivery of healthcare.2 My research
adds to this scholarship by examining the ght to desegregate
healthcare in Southeast Texas. It contributes to Vanessa
Northington Gamble’s exceptional scholarship on the Black
hospital movement. She argues that in the early twentieth
century, these hospitals were integral to the training of African
American physicians and providing health care to their
communities. To strengthen and legitimize their hospitals,
Gamble argues, Black healthcare professionals established
the National Hospital Association and the National Medical
Association, organizations rooted in local community clinics
and hospitals.3
This article also contributes to the scholarship on the
overall medical policies and practices that discriminated
2. For scholarship involving civil rights and recreational and educational spac-
es, see Robert J. Robertson, Fair Ways: How Six Black Golfers Won Civil Rights in
Beaumont, Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005). Robert-
son illustrates how despite growing resistance, Beaumont’s African American
leaders persisted in their struggle to desegregate public parks in the city. Amil-
car Shabazz, Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and
Equity in Higher Education in Texas (Chapel Hill: The University of North Car-
olina Press, 2004). Shabazz examines efforts by the NAACP and local Black
leaders to desegregate higher educational institutions in Texas. He argues that
success required a delicate balance of cooperation between Black and white
leaders.
3. Vanessa Northington Gamble, The Black Community Hospital: Contemporary
Dilemmas in Historical Perspective (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989);
and Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1940 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
9
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
against African Americans. Through my examination of
city records, local and state newspapers, and interviews with
community members and the Sprott family, I show how
African American healthcare professionals like Dr. Sprott
marshalled their resources to provide quality medical services
for Beaumont’s Black community, and thus, were part of a
local healthcare foundation that the broader Black hospital
movement was built upon. To effect lasting change, Black
healthcare providers tied the need for an expanded civil
rights framework to include access and delivery of equitable
medical services for African Americans.4
4. In Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrim-
ination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2011), Alondra Nelson illus-
trates the connections between civil rights issues, racial capitalism, violence,
and healthcare by examining the Black Panther Party’s efforts to provide med-
ical services to the African American community in Oakland, California, in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nelson argues that the Black Panthers based
their efforts on a “redenition” of health that linked individual well-being
to the overall well-being of the community. In Black Physicians in the Jim Crow
South (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2003), Thomas J. Ward
Jr. explores the relationship between African American doctors and their pa-
tients. Ward argues that the intersection of race and class shaped the role
Black physicians played in their communities as leaders and, in turn, how
members of their community viewed them. In Caring for Equality: A History
of African American Health and Healthcare (New York: Rowman & Littleeld
Publishers, 2018), David McBride chronicles the history of Black physicians’
efforts to attain the “health equality ideal.” To have a healthy American pop-
ulation, McBride argues, all members of the national community should have
access to equitable healthcare. See also, Damon Tweedy, Black Man in a White
Coat: A Doctor’s Reections on Race and Medicine (New York: Picador Publishing,
2016), E.H. Beardsley, “Making Separate, Equal: Black Physicians and the
Problems of Medical Segregation in the Pre-World War II South,” Bulletin of
the History of Medicine, 57 (Fall 1983): 382-396. Todd Savitt, “Entering a White
Profession: Black Physicians in the New South, 1880-1920, Bulletin of the His-
tory of Medicine, 61 (Winter 1987): 507-540.
10
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
In the early twentieth century, Beaumont, Texas, was deeply
entrenched in Jim Crow segregation. The city had distinct
racial boundaries dividing its residential, recreational, and
business areas. Medical facilities and healthcare were no
different. Until the 1940s when white-operated hospitals
added segregated wings, African Americans had no facilities
in Beaumont. In addition, these hospitals denied Black
physicians privileges to practice until the early 1960s when
the US government predicated federal funding on the
desegregation of healthcare facilities. Before that, however,
physicians like Dr. Sprott recognized the need for African
American patients to have access to medical care and
took matters into their own hands. Sprott built a modern,
comprehensive medical facility that served the community to
ensure Black patients had access to quality healthcare. Sprott,
along with his two brothers Curtis and Maxie fought against
the discriminatory policies and practices that restricted
African Americans into segregated residential, recreational,
business, and healthcare spaces. They helped shine a spotlight
on the glaring inequities in local healthcare provisions. In
doing so, they left an indelible legacy in Southeast Texas. Dr.
Ed Sprott is just one example of the grassroots community
activism that was integral to challenging and breaking down
the racial barriers in Southeast Texas.
In segregated Beaumont, African Americans lived and worked
primarily in four main districts. These areas thrived with Black-
owned and operated businesses that served the community.
The Sprott home on Roberts Street was in what would become
known as the Cartwright Addition. The smallest of the four
African American communities—only about eight blocks—
11
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
it contained some of the wealthiest African American homes
in Beaumont. The Cartwright Addition was situated between
and immediately adjoining nearby white neighborhoods. On
the east side of the Cartwright Addition, the tracks of the
Southern Pacic Railroad “provided a clear separation” from
a white neighborhood. On the west side, Black and white
neighborhoods were contiguous, distinguished only by an
alley that separated the backyards of Black-occupied houses
on Houston Street and white-occupied houses on Amarillo
Street.5
Growing up, Ed Sprott Jr. and his siblings understood race
relations in segregated Beaumont. They all attended the
segregated schools. After they graduated from Charlton-
Pollard High School, each began their collegiate journey. Ed
Sprott Jr. left Beaumont to attend Wiley College in Marshall,
Texas—a school established in 1873 by the Freedmen’s
Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It is the
oldest African American institute of higher learning west
of the Mississippi River. After earning his bachelor’s degree,
Sprott wanted to continue his education. However, Texas
provided no graduate schools for African Americans, so
he pursued his medical education at Meharry Medical
College in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, Meharry and
Howard University were the only two remaining of fourteen
medical schools established after the Civil War for “freed
slaves and their descendants.” In 1935 after his graduation
from Meharry, Sprott completed his residency at Homer
G. Phillips Hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri—a teaching
hospital for African American physicians. While at Phillips,
5. Robertson, Fair Ways, 44.
12
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Sprott was joined by his younger brother Curtis, who had
followed Ed to Wiley, Meharry, and a residency in psychiatry
at Phillips. Their youngest brother Maxie followed a few
years later. After his residency, Ed Sprott returned home to
Beaumont and opened his medical practice. His rst ofce
was in the White Building, owned by Sol and George White.
The brothers were among the most respected and wealthiest
members of Beaumont’s African American community. Sol
owned and operated his pharmacy out of the building, and
George operated a law ofce there.6
In Beaumont like most southern cities and towns, segregation
extended to the provision of healthcare services. For the
most part, early hospitals in Beaumont did not accept African
Americans, and although some white physicians treated Black
patients, they made those patients enter through a side or back
door. In 1897, the Catholic Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate
Word established Hotel Dieu, the rst permanent hospital
in Beaumont. It was a three-story building with twenty-four
beds. In 1901 after the Lucas Gusher resulted in a population
explosion, the hospital increased its bed capacity to sixty, and
by 1907, it had reached eighty. However, Hotel Dieu only
6. Dana Sprott Cunningham interview, May 30, 2019; Ward, Black Physicians, 3,
65; Robertson, Fair Ways, 36-37; M.O. Bouseld, “An Account of Physicians
of Color in the United States,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 17 (January
1945): 61-84; Darlene Clark Hine, “The Pursuit of Professional Equality: Me-
harry Medical College, 1921-1938. A Case Study” in Vincent P. Franklin and
James D. Anderson, eds., New Perspectives on Black Educational History (Boston:
G.K. Hall, 1978), 173-192; Earl H. Harley, “The Forgotten History of De-
funct Black Medical Schools in the 19th and 20th Centuries and the Impact
of the Flexner Report,” Journal of the National Medical Association, 98 (Septem-
ber 2006): 1425-1429; Ron C. Tyler, ed., The New Handbook of Texas (6 vols.
Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 6:972.
13
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
accepted Black patients on a case-by-case basis depending
if they had room to segregate them in a separate hall. In
1928, the one-hundred-bed Beaumont General Hospital
opened to quite a fanfare, boasting cutting-edge technology
and a modern design, but it did not provide healthcare for
African Americans. By 1934, Beaumont General was in such
nancial straits that the Sisters of Charity purchased it for
$245,000 and renamed it St. Therese Hospital, but the sisters
continued the practice of denying Black patients.7
Because of the lack of reliable healthcare services, Black
healthcare providers responded by organizing a variety
of health and wellness campaigns for the members of
their community beginning in the early 1920s. Healthcare
professionals such as R.N. Miller, Peter G. Byrd, C.G.
Lockley, William Tyler, and E.S. Cravens founded the Oil
City Medical Society composed of Black doctors, dentists,
and pharmacists. The society hosted several “Health Week”
programs that featured daily events like “hygiene Monday,”
“disease and insect Tuesday,” “Tuberculosis Wednesday,”
“children’s health Thursday,” and “church sanitation Friday.”
As the Oil City Medical Society’s membership grew, they
expanded their services by offering eye; ear, nose, and throat;
and urology clinics. In addition, they participated in the local
and state fairs by setting up exhibits and distributing literature
that emphasized the importance of good health and hygiene.
The group often held “health talks” for the public hosted
by local Black-owned businesses and churches. Among the
7. Dana Sprott Cunningham interview, May 30, 2019; Father James F. Van-
derholt, Carolyn B. Martinez, and Karen A. Gilman, The Diocese of Beaumont:
The Catholic Story of Southeast Texas (Beaumont.: Diocese of Beaumont, 1991).
14
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
chief concerns of African American healthcare providers
was the alarming rise of infant and child mortality rates. In
the early twentieth century, the infant mortality rate in the
United States had risen exponentially with African Americans
experiencing over twice the number of infant deaths than the
second highest racial group. In response, the Oil City Medical
Society provided free maternal and well-baby health clinics.
They also visited local schools and youth groups such as the
Boy Scouts, YMCA, and YWCA to promote these important
healthcare initiatives to school-aged children.8
These healthcare professionals joined a long tradition of
African Americans providing services within their own
communities. They were also part of a larger movement
taking place in the early twentieth century—the Black
hospital movement. As historian Vanessa Northington
Gamble argues, they created their own health care spaces
such as professional societies, hospitals, and training facilities.
They built their own healthcare system from the ground
up—founding hospitals, medical societies, medical journals,
pharmacies, and educational institutions to maintain the
rigor and standards required in the eld. These medical
professionals not only had to focus on building this “parallel”
structure and with substantially lower renumeration than
their white counterparts, but they also had to grapple with
prejudice from a variety of sources. While institutional racism
8. BE, March 31, November 24, 1924, April 1, 1929, May 11, 1931, and Oc-
tober 13, 1932; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Re-
form and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1998), 3-4; Myron E. Wegman, “Infant Mortality in the 20th
Century, Dramatic but Uneven Progress,” The Journal of Nutrition, 131 (Feb-
ruary 2001): 401S-408S.
15
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
existed within the medical eld, Black patients themselves
sometimes questioned the ability of Black doctors to provide
quality health care. Nevertheless, Black physicians and
business leaders in Beaumont created a medical care system
for their community.9
In the fall of 1932, Reverend Charles Graham, a British
Guiana immigrant, opened the Barnwell Community
Center in a small frame house on Ash Street. It included
the Community Health Home, the rst clinic operated
exclusively by African American doctors and nurses for the
care of African American patients. Most received treatment
free of charge as the clinic director reported that over eighty
percent could not pay for the services. In addition, the
Community Health Home hosted twice-a-week clinics for
mothers and children, offering health, hygiene and nutrition
courses. Over thirty mothers enrolled in this program. In its
rst quarterly statement, the clinic reported treating over four
hundred patients. Donations from the community paid most
of the operating expenses of the clinic, while the healthcare
providers donated their time and expertise, including Dr. Ed
Sprott Jr. In 1937, he volunteered at the Community Health
Home and witnessed the severe inequities in the delivery of
healthcare services.10
9. Gamble, Making a Place for Ourselves; and “Black Autonomy versus White
Control: Black Hospitals and the Dilemma of White Philanthropy, 1920-
1940,” Minerva, 35 (Autumn 1997): 247-267; Savitt, “Entering a White Pro-
fession,” 515.
10. Local healthcare professionals who donated their time at the clinic includ-
ed Drs. Peter Byrd, L.C. Larkins, William Tyler, E.S. Cravens, C.J. Lockley, Ed
Sprott, and L.L. Melton. Registered nurse Helen Nolbert served as the direc-
16
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
That same year, the Community Health Home added a new
annex that doubled its capacity and increased its facilities
for hospitalization, including separate men’s and women’s
wards, an obstetrical ward, and a private room. The clinic
also increased it staff adding a registered nurse—a recent
graduate of Prairie View College. Despite these additions,
the demand grew for more patient beds. In 1941, Beaumont’s
ten practicing African American physicians, including Sprott,
formed a committee to investigate the needs of indigent
patients and called on the city to make more equitable
healthcare services available to all its citizens. The committee
implored city leaders to provide adequate facilities and allow
African American physicians to provide services for their
patients when hospitalized. Furthermore, the committee
pledged their “whole-hearted support and co-operation in
such a worthy enterprise based on equitable fairness to all
citizens concerned.” In August of that year, Beaumont city
leaders put forward plans for opening the Municipal Hospital
for indigent patients under the direction of white physician
Dr. William A. Smith. The city purchased two square blocks
on Park Street and Washington Boulevard, as well as the old
Smyth Walden house for conversion into a twenty-ve-bed
healthcare facility. Due to nancial delays and unforeseen
construction issues, the opening of the new hospital would
take almost two years. As construction continued, the board
of directors, along with local health and social services
authorities announced the strict requirements for who
qualied for “indigent services.” And while the hospital
tor of the health department division for African Americans. BE, October 1,
1932, February 11, July 19, September 14, October 3, 1933, and April 4, 1937.
17
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
would treat Black patients, decisions about their admittance
would hinge on if there was enough room to segregate them
from “deserving” indigent white patients. In addition, while
African American physicians could send their patients to the
new hospital, they were not accorded privileges to follow
their patients should they require admittance.11
During the construction phase, segregation in healthcare
continued. In response, Dr. Jake S. Douglas opened the
second medical facility in Beaumont for African Americans
in 1942. The Douglas Hospital Clinic added sixteen more
patient beds and offered a variety of medical services
including pediatrics, orthodontics, and obstetrics. The same
year, Dr. W.W. Davis opened the smaller Central Hospital.
These two facilities, together with the Barnwell Community
Health Home, provided the most comprehensive medical
care available at the time for Beaumont’s African American
residents and, unlike white-operated facilities, they did so
without the benet of any federal subsidies.12
On April 19, 1943, Beaumont Municipal Hospital opened for
business. The steering committee hosted a “house-warming”
reception for over ve hundred local white dignitaries and
political, business, and social leaders. Two weeks after its
opening, the new facility had reached near-capacity. Soon
after, the Beaumont Tuberculosis Association moved its
clinics there, and white patients received priority. Because
of the shortage of hospital beds during World War II, the
Municipal Hospital was often used as an overow site—again
11. BE, July 8, September 10, 1941, January 1, 1942, and March 31, 1943.
12. BE, August 27, 1937, and February 29, 1996.
18
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
with white patients receiving priority. Technically the facility
treated African Americans, but it rarely accommodated them,
and they only received care from white doctors who were
likely unfamiliar with their medical histories.13
As the United States entered World War II, Southeast Texas
and particularly the port in Beaumont became an integral
part of the war production effort for the Allies. For his part,
Ed Sprott enlisted in the US Army, serving as a physician
in a segregated unit. Back in Beaumont, racial tensions ran
high in the city. By 1942, the population surged as many
laborers—both Black and white—came to Beaumont
seeking employment in the defense industry. The population
in Beaumont in 1940 was around fty-nine thousand. With
the opening of more jobs, the population grew to around
eighty thousand by 1943, with African Americans continuing
to represent a third of the citizenry. The rst signs of
increased racial discord occurred on the city’s overwhelmed
transportation services. Although state and local ordinances
called for segregation, the reality of the situation caused
over-packing of city busses with Black passengers often
standing in the aisles. In June and July 1942, several incidents
occurred between Black and white passengers. During one
incident, Beaumont police ofcers confronted Charles Reco,
an enlisted soldier on leave, because he refused to move his
knees that stuck out past the Jim Crow sign into the white
section of the bus. During the confrontation, the ofcers shot
him four times. This act of deance reected the feelings of
many African Americans that they had every right to occupy
the same public spaces as whites. For many whites, who used
13. BE, April 18, May 5, 1943, and December 7, 1945.
19
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
the language of safety and order to justify segregation and to
harness white fear, the deance led to a hostile encounter with
the police which, in turn, reinforced the connection between
race and violence. After an investigation by the police and
the attorney general, a grand jury was convened. The jury
exonerated the police of any responsibility, and eventually,
the federal district attorney dropped the case against Reco
citing, “no prospect of conviction.” Tensions waxed and
waned over the next year until they exploded the next year.14
The summer of 1943 saw the United States engulfed in several
race riots. The escalating anxiety about the US involvement
in World War II, the competition over higher-paying jobs
in defense industries, and the increasing efforts of many
whites to enforce distinct boundaries for minorities led to
a series of conicts. In May, the violence began in Mobile,
Alabama, and by June, it had stretched across the country to
Los Angeles with the “zoot-suit” riots where mostly white
servicemen on leave and off-duty ofcers roamed the streets
beating Mexican-American and African-American youths
wearing ashy, baggy, zoot suits.15
During that same month, Beaumont experienced its own
explosion of racial violence. On June 4, 1943, a twenty-four-
year-old Black man, Curtis Thomas, assaulted an eighteen-
year-old white girl with a knife. When ofcers approached
him, Thomas attempted to ee, and the police shot and
14. BE, July 28 and August 20, 1942.
15. Victoria W. Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle Over Segregat-
ed Recreation in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012);
Eduardo Obregon Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot
in Wartime L.A. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
20
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
wounded him. They took the suspect to Hotel Dieu where
he was put in the new “negro ward.” Later that night, a
crowd of about 150 white citizens gathered at the hospital
with the intent of lynching Thomas for his alleged crime.
Police Chief Ross Dickey arrived and convinced them to
disperse. Two days later, Thomas died from his wounds.
On June 15, 1943, after Beaumont police received a report
that a white woman had been raped by a Black man, the
ames of racial hatred were reignited. When word of the
incident reached the Pennsylvania Shipyard, hundreds of
white workers walked off their jobs to take justice into their
own hands. The mob grew to as many as three thousand
when joined by white residents of Beaumont. When they
reached the police station, they demanded that the rapist
be handed over for lynching. Chief Dickey refused, and
the mob rioted throughout African American business and
residential sections of the city, setting re to automobiles and
buildings. Hundreds of African Americans sustained injuries,
and rioters damaged up to two hundred homes. Perhaps as
many as 2,500 Black residents ed the city. Acting Governor
Alexander Aikin declared martial law, and after fteen hours,
the violence subsided. The nal twist to the horric events
came the day after when the examining physician revealed
that the accuser had not, in fact, been raped.16
16. BE, June 6-7, 16-17, 1943; New York Times, June 16-17, 1943; James A.
Burran, “Violence in an ‘Arsenal of Democracy’: The Beaumont Race Riot,
1943,” East Texas Historical Journal, 14 (Spring 1976): 39-52; James S. Olson
and Sharon Phair, “Anatomy of a Race Riot: Beaumont, Texas, 1943,” Texana,
11 (1973): 64-72; Alecia Machele Ross, “An Examination of the Beaumont
Race Riot of 1943,” The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record, 52 (2016):
19-30.
21
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
As the racial violence unfolded in Beaumont during the
summer of 1943, Ed and Curtis Sprott still served in the
army. Tradition indicates that no one in the Sprott family
was actively involved in the events of that summer. However,
rioters damaged the building owned by the White Brothers
where Ed kept his ofce. Despite not being actively involved,
the Sprotts no doubt realized the consequences of the riot for
Beaumont’s Black community. Later that year when Sprott
received his honorable discharge from the army, he returned
home to open his own medical practice amid a city that was
still in pain from the wounds of racial violence and discord.
Sprott was determined to make quality healthcare accessible
to the Black community, while at the same time ghting to
achieve overall equity for African Americans in Beaumont.17
Sprott knew that African American patients not only needed
quality care, but they also needed continuity of care. Since
Black doctors were not able to see their own patients if they
required a hospital stay, Sprott decided to build a modern
hospital to address these deciencies. While three Beaumont
hospitals admitted African American patients, they still
needed more beds and more comprehensive care. Sprott
purchased property on Cartwright Street within a block from
the Sprott family homes. By this time, Ed, Curtis, and their
parents lived in the Cartwright Addition. On June 19, 1944,
a day that the Beaumont Enterprise anticipated would see an
“orderly” observance of Juneteenth, construction began on
the new Sprott Hospital. Located at 2390 Cartwright Street,
the original permit called for a 32 x 115-foot building at cost
17. Dana Sprott Cunningham interview, May 31, 2019; Oliver Sprott inter-
view with the author, May 30, 2019.
22
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Dr. Edward D. Sprott and the staff of the Sprott Hospital about 1967. The Gary and Rolfe
Christopher Collection, Special Collections, Mary & John Gray Library, Lamar University.
23
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
of $25,900. It opened on October 1. Although the Sprott
brothers intended for this modern facility to provide quality
medical care for Black patients, they treated anyone who
came through their doors. Living so close, they remained on
call twenty-four hours a day, and the whole family helped out
at the new hospital.18
In response to the continued bed shortage in Southeast Texas,
Baptist Hospital opened in 1949, but it implemented the
old Jim Crow policies. Billed as a “City of Healing,” Baptist
Hospital admitted Black patients, but only a limited number
who were segregated. Just like the other white-operated
hospitals in the city, Baptist denied Black physicians privileges
to practice in their facility. When the doctors questioned
this policy, citing the importance of continuing healthcare
management for admitted patients, hospital administrators
responded that policy dictated that they could only grant
those privileges to members of the Jefferson County Medical
Society. The society’s charter contained a clause permitting
“only white physicians” as members. Frustrated, Sprott
realized something needed to change and waiting for it to
happen was not working. He believed that a multi-pronged
approach would be necessary to break down all laws of
segregation. As a result, Sprott expanded the services that his
hospital provided, and he would soon become more active in
the broader civil rights issues in the city.19
18. BE, June 17, 20 and October 1, 1944; Oliver Sprott interview, May 29,
2019.
19. Dana Sprott Cunningham interview, May 30, 2019; Dr. J.S. Douglas quot-
ed in BE, November 14, 1999; Vanderholt, Martinez, and Gilman, Diocese of
Beaumont..
24
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
By 1949, the Sprott Hospital was one of four hospitals
serving African Americans in Beaumont—all of which were
privately owned. Of these four, the Sprott Hospital was the
largest and provided the most comprehensive care. While
Ed and Curtis Sprott most often treated common ailments
and injuries, they also provided obstetric and gynecological
services for women and a pediatric clinic for children. In
addition, they were able to provide laboratory and x-ray
services, and perform minor surgeries. The Sprotts also
treated urgent-care cases. For example, the Sprott Hospital
treated a Black man who was struck by a “mystery bullet”
while sitting on his back porch or man who was stabbed
several times and was brought across town to the hospital.
He died shortly after his arrival. Charges ranged from $5.50
to $7.00 a day for a private room to $3.50 to $5.00 a day for
a bed in the ward. However, a patient’s inability to pay was
never a factor for the doctors at the Sprott Hospital—they
sometimes took vegetables, eggs, or even chickens in lieu of
cash. By 1948, Baptist Hospital and Hotel Dieu announced
the addition eighty-two beds for African American patients,
but still prohibited Black doctors from practicing there.20
In 1951, the Texas Hospital Association accepted the Sprott
Hospital as an active institutional member, an indication
that it demonstrated the high qualications and ethical
standards of good hospitalization. These standards were
reected in the activities and programs the Sprott doctors
promoted throughout the community. The Sprott Hospital,
20. BE, November 26, 1944, January 24, July 27, 1948, July 22, 1949, July 19,
1950, and February 14, 1999; Dana Sprott Cunningham interview, May 30,
2019.
25
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
along with Barnwell, Douglas, and Central Hospitals served
an important need in Beaumont by providing much-needed
medical services, but the doctors believed there was more
to be done to promote interest in the medical eld and the
growth of African American healthcare professionals. Both
the Sprott Hospital and the Douglas Hospital began offering
licensed vocational nursing courses and nurse’s aide training
courses. Curtis Sprott, who served as the medical director
for the segregated all-Black schools in the South Park School
District, persuaded the district to begin a new program for
African American students who wanted to pursue careers
in nursing. As a result in 1951, the South Park board of
education voted that Hebert High School would offer pre-
nursing classes to begin “preparing young negroes as nurses
[sic] aides,” with Curtis Sprott and registered nurse Jerodine
Randolph overseeing the new program. The students in the
program would complete their clinical training at Sprott
Hospital. However, the Sprotts did not limit their advocacy
to just medical training. Ed and Curtis Sprott, along with
Drs. Jake Douglas and Peter Byrd, fought for the opening
of a “negro division” at Lamar College that offered a variety
of vocational and pre-professional courses for African
Americans, as well as convincing college ofcials to expand
the use of the G.I. Bill for tuition for Black veterans.21
On May 23, 1950, Beaumont Mayor Otto Plummer
announced at the city council meeting that the city intended
to apply to the state board of health to request $150,000
in state and federal aid for construction of a brand-new
21. BE, August 8, 1948, January 28, August 16, 1949, August 10, and Septem-
ber 19, 1951.
26
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Municipal Hospital building that would provide at least
fty beds. Plummer stated that there was a “unanimity of
opinion” at the meeting which the council interpreted “as a
clear mandate to go ahead.” Plummer added that he believed
the public’s view had remained unchanged since the city had
previously voted in 1942 to divert $165,000 from bond funds
for the establishment of the rst city hospital. However, the
mayor was not entirely accurate in his statement that everyone
was in “100% agreement” with this proposal. Ed Sprott, who
attended the city council meeting, expressed his concern that
this new hospital project would continue the discriminatory
practices already present at the current city hospital. Sprott
pointed out that when the city voted on the original bond
for the hospital in 1942, there was the “promise then that
negro doctors would be able to treat their patients there,”
but Sprott maintained that the promise had not been kept
because Black doctors were still being denied “the right to
practice at the city hospital.”22
As he became more involved in local civil rights issues,
headstrong Sprott emerged as a capable leader in the
community. In 1952, he was elected to serve as president
of the local branch of the NAACP, and on the topic of
integration, he preferred the strategy of cooperation rather
than legal action. When he met with little or no cooperation,
however, Sprott employed a variety of strategies to achieve
equal rights and encountered backlash from white pro-
segregation political leaders. In a letter to the Beaumont
Enterprise, Sprott wrote that he believed that the majority of
African Americans wanted “freedom, justice, and equality”
22. BE, May 24, 1950.
27
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
and that they were “entitled to, constitutionally, and morally,
the enjoyment of their human and civil rights on the same
basis as other Americans.” He insisted that these demands
were not “militant” as many white Beaumont leaders
attempted to label it.23
In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the US Supreme Court
ordered the desegregation of public schools. In 1956,
Beaumont mayor Jimmie Cokinos called for the integrating
Lamar College, but segregationists in the city organized a
white Citizens’ Council. They pledged to “wage an active
campaign against the integration in public schools.” B.E.
Masters, president of the Association of Citizens’ Councils
in Texas arrived in Beaumont to help organize the group and
to speak at its rst meeting. As he addressed the crowd from
the boxing ring in the Sportatorium, he proclaimed that he
was speaking from a “a place of battle.” Behind Masters, as
he called upon the attendees to join in the ght “to save the
nation,” a “black gure was suspended from the ceiling …
with a white cord around the neck.” According to the council,
six hundred white Beaumonters attended this rst meeting
that night—all determined to shut down equal access to
education. The council announced their ultimate goals at the
next meeting which included preserving a “way of life which
the South has found satisfactory for a hundred years.” On
the other side of the issue, Ed Sprott Jr., as president of
the local NAACP, offered the organization’s full cooperation
and assistance to ease the transition in local schools. Sprott
stated that because of the various locations of the public
schools throughout the city, he did not foresee any major
23. BE, October 13, 1966.
28
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
problems in integrating them to the satisfaction of the entire
community. Furthermore, he added that he trusted that all
“men of integrity” would work together with the school
district to ease the transition so that “full citizenship may be
enjoyed by all.” Full integration, however, would be slow to
materialize.24
To assuage civil rights activists, the Beaumont city council
organized a sixty-member United Racial Council (URC) with
a white chairman and an executive committee composed of
three white and three Black men. Ed and Curtis Sprott both
served as members. The URC, however, was short-lived. As
the prolonged battles over desegregation in education were
moving through the judicial system, the URC shifted their
focus to the desegregation of local recreational spaces. The
organization was initially successful in obtaining the city
council’s approval to desegregate two city parks only to have
city authorities reverse their decision two days later after
protests and threats from segregationists. Many Black leaders,
feeling betrayed, believed that if both sides could not work
in good faith towards a satisfactory resolution, their only
recourse was to continue to work through the judicial system.
The URC never met again. Ed Sprott issued a statement
through the Enterprise expressing his own disappointment.
He stated that members of the black community would
continue to obey local customs, pay their taxes, and serve
their community and nation as needed. He noted, however,
24. BE, May 27, 1954. October 14, November 25, 1956. Beaumont ISD would
eventually begin integrating its schools in the 1982-1983 school year. South
Park ISD resisted until there was a vote and approval from TEA to merge the
two districts which occurred in 1984.
29
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
that as a community, African Americans would “forever work
for a speedy realization” of “full civil liberties.” The Black
community, Sprott continued, had abided by the “custom,
not the legality, of segregated city-owned and tax-supported
institutions since the inception of Beaumont … and have
given whole-hearted support and co-operation” to plan for
a voluntary desegregation process by selecting a remote,
isolated park as a starting point to begin the process. Yet
the city leaders did not possess the fortitude to uphold their
own order to desegregate in the face of white opposition.
Sprott, however, still held out hope for change. He believed
that the “latent good” in Beaumont could be harnessed for
“constructive, creative, democratic social change.”25
As he became more active in the struggle for equal rights, Ed
Sprott Jr. faced continued backlash. On the evening of January
7, 1957, an explosion rocked the Sprott home that was heard
“over a wide area of west and southwest of Beaumont.”
According to the Beaumont Enterprise, investigating ofcers
determined that either a “small charge of dynamite or a large
recracker” left a one-square yard hole in the family’s front
yard and shattered a portion of the sidewalk. Family members,
however, remember greater damage. In the following days,
two more devices exploded on Curtis Sprott’s property and
at the hospital. Fortunately, no one was injured in any of
the explosions. While residents of the Black community had
their suspicions that at least one of the perpetrators was
a former law enforcement ofcer, city ofcials dismissed
25. BE, June 22 and October 20, 1954; Warren Breed, Beaumont, Texas: Col-
lege Desegregation without Popular Support, Field Reports on Desegregation in the South
(New York: B’nai and B’rith, 1957), 5; Robertson, Fair Ways, 85, 87.
30
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
it as harmless children’s pranks. On another occasion, Ed
Sprott and his family awoke to nd a cross burning in their
front yard. There were also several times when the hospital
itself was defaced with racial slurs or had the letters “KKK”
painted on its outside walls. Sprott called out law enforcement
and local leaders over the racial violence. In an Enterprise
op-ed, Sprott wrote that churches and homes were being
bombed and school children were being threatened while law
enforcement agencies did nothing. In response, the secretary
of the Beaumont Citizens’ Council issued a scornful public
reply condemning the paper for becoming a “sounding
board and public purveyor of the insidious and subversive
doctrines of the NAACP.” The writer continued his attack
of the NAACP, calling it an “unpatriotic, subversive, and
nefarious” organization. In other words, as members of
the Black community like Sprott continued to voice their
views that all Beaumonters had the right to occupy space in
the community, they were repeatedly attacked. Civil rights
activists like the Sprotts were portrayed as “trouble-makers”
and “rabble-rousers” by many white local leaders to instill
fear within the white community, and their tactics seemed to
work as the organization saw an increase in its membership.26
In November 1957, the Texas branch of the NAACP elected
Ed Sprott Jr. as its president. In that role, he directed the
activities of all 113 state branches. He pledged to “ght
every ugly and immoral kind of legislation on civil rights and
education in the courts.” Sprott marshalled the resources
of the statewide NAACP to ght for integration. The
26. BE, January 8, 10, June 10, 14, 1957, and February 27, 1997; Dana Sprott
Cunningham interview, May 31, 2019.
31
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
local Citizens Council condemned the NAACP as a radical
Communist organization that sought to subvert “white
people’s individual freedom of choice.” Sprott responded
that those who opposed the Brown decision were not living
in the twentieth century and needed some enlightenment.
He continued by stating that African Americans were only
seeking for “America to be true to itself and the Constitution
of the United States.”27
Thurgood Marshall echoed these sentiments when on
November 15, 1959, he spoke at the statewide NAACP
meeting held in Beaumont. As chief counsel for the
organization speaking to a crowd of over at hundred at the
City Auditorium, he urged his audience to press a “righteous
ght” toward “rst class citizenship.” He insisted that “every
school in this state belongs to every citizen in this state.”
Marshall reminded the crowd that the NAACP had ongoing
lawsuits in every state except Mississippi and he implored
Beaumont’s Black community not to settle for excuses in
the delayed integration of schools—that equal access to
education would only come from the continuing challenges
to the status quo.28
In 1960, the National Urban League invited Sprott to speak
at their southern regional conference in Atlanta, Georgia,
about hospital integration policies. That same year, he ran
for a position on the Beaumont city council to represent
Ward 3, believing that he may be able to effect actual change
in healthcare policies from within the political structure. He
27. BE, October 7, November 5, 1957, September 11 and 19, 1958.
28. BE, November 16, 1959.
32
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
ran his campaign on a platform to represent “all individual
citizens in the best interest of Beaumont” as well as urban
renewal, improving city streets, industrial expansion,
revitalizing downtown Beaumont, improving recreational
youth facilities, and reforming the municipal court system.
Despite being the rst African American candidate to run
for city council, Sprott lost in a runoff to white candidate
Earl Patton.29
In 1962, Sprott planned to enlarge his hospital to accommodate
the increasing medical needs of the community. At an
estimated cost of $120,000 to $150,000, Sprott applied for
an equitable tax adjustment on the property, but the city
council denied his request. It seemed like at every turn, white
city leaders blocked efforts to afford African Americans
equitable healthcare.30
That same year, Beaumont opened its newest medical
facility—Saint Elizabeth Hospital. Hailed as the future of
modern medical facilities, the six-story, six-million-dollar
building accommodated a total of 431 beds and boasted
“everything necessary for medical and surgical care.” Saint
Elizabeth sent out applications to all local white physicians
to join their staff. When Sprott learned of the letters, he
29. BE, March 5, May 20, 1960, and February 12, 1970; “Hospitals and Oth-
er Health Facilities: Hospital Discrimination,” The National Medical Association
Journal, 54 (March 1962): 253-255. The National Medical Association was or-
ganized in 1895 for African American physicians and health professionals
because they were excluded from white healthcare organizations. The journal
included a special section “Integration Battlefront” that documented local
efforts to overcome discrimination in the medical eld.
30. BE, September 18, 1962.
33
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
led a lawsuit on the grounds that if the hospital received
federal funds, it could not segregate their medical staff.
The Hill-Burton Act (1946) had provided federal funds for
up to a third the cost of hospital construction. However,
it contained a clause endorsing the “separate but equal”
doctrine. When several African American healthcare
professionals challenged this discriminatory law in Simkins
v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, the District Court ruled
against them. The plantiffs appealed, and in November 1963,
the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found hospitals that
practiced racial discrimination were in violation of the Fifth
and Fourteenth Amendments. Almost a year before that
decision, however, the Saint Elizabeth Hospital admitted the
ve African American doctors who had applied, including
Edward, Curtis, and Maxie Sprott.31
As other white-owned medical facilities in the region
admitted Black physicians, the need for the Sprott Hosptial
lessened. Segregation did not end abruptly, and Ed and Maxie
Sprott continued the ght for equal access to all spaces,
particularly healthcare spaces, within the city. While they
tried to maintain the Sprott Hospital and provide a variety
of healthcare services, the brothers found it increasingly
31. By January 1963, Saint Elizabeth Hospital admitted the Sprott brothers
and Drs. James E. Powell and Charles R. Wallace. “Beaumont, Texas, Hospital
Opens Doors,” The Journal of the National Medical Association, 55 (January 1963):
65; Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, 323 F.2d 959 (4th Cir. 1963);
E.H. Beardsley, “Good-Bye to Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern
Hospitals, 1945-70,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 60 (Fall 1986): 367-
386; Jill Quadagno, “Promoting Civil Rights Through the Welfare State: How
Medicare Integrated Southern Hospitals,” Social Problems, 47 (February 2000):
68-89; Emily A. Largent, “Public Health, Racism, and the Lasting Impact of
Hospital Segregation,” Public Health Reports, 133 (November 2018): 715-720.
34
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
The Sprott Hospital in 2020. Photograph by the author.
35
Kibbe DR. EDWARD D. SPROTT
difcult to compete with the multimillion dollar corporate-
run facilities. In 1969, the Sprott Hospital ofcially closed its
doors, but Maxie Sprott continued using the building for his
medical practice until his death in 2002.
Soon after the hospital closed, Dr. Edward D. Sprott Jr. died
at his home on February 11, 1970. The Enterprise described
him as a “well known Beaumont physician and civic worker.”
The local chapter of the NAACP passed a resolution of
condolences to the Sprott family. “We remember fondly the
committment, energy, money, and time he devoted to the
NAACP and other civil rights organizations,” the chapter
declared and forwarded donations that it had received in
Sprott’s memory to the state ofce.32
Although legal measures may have granted African American
healthcare professionals legal access to facilities, change did
not occur immediately. Many Black healthcare providers
experienced de facto racism in those institutions. In addition,
disparities in healthcare policies and practices among racial
and socioeconomic boundaries persists to this day. Low-
income people often go without proper medical care because
they cannot afford it. This includes a large proportion of
African Americans.
Dr. Ed Sprott Jr., his brothers Drs. Curtis Sprott and Maxie
Sprott, along with hundreds of other Black healthcare
advocates in Beaumont were part of an important grassroots
movement to provide equal access to quality healthcare for
African Americans. Facing severe backlash and violence
from white segregationists in Beaumont and abroad, they
32. BE, February 12 and 19, 1970.
36
VOLUME 57 The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
persevered. They built a hospital that for twenty-ve years
cared for Beaumont citizens who could not nd aid in the
city’s white-owned facilities. As both a physician and civil
rights leader, Ed Sprott contributed to the movement that
brought an end to legal segregation in health, education, and
city services.
Tina M. Kibbe received her PhD. from the University at
Buffalo, specializing in science, medical, and US women’s
history. She joined the faculty at Lamar University in 2016 as
Lecturer in History. She will receive a promotion to Assistant
Professor of History at Lamar beginning in the Fall of 2022.
