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by Carlton Houston (Author)
"This Great Hospital Fight" - Dr. Drake
At the height of racial and political tensions in early twentieth-century Houston, two unlikely figures became allies. Dr. William M. Drake, a pioneering surgeon and Black community leader, and Joseph Cullinan, a white oil magnate and founder of the company that became Texaco, united in a desperate effort to save a hospital that symbolized hope. The Houston Negro Hospital was born from America's Black hospital movement. Dedicated on Juneteenth 1926, it embodied a bold experiment to bring dignity and health care access to a community that was systematically denied both in the Jim Crow South.
Journalist and storyteller Carlton Houston--whose ancestors played a role in this remarkable heritage--reveals the untold, human drama behind the institution that would become Riverside General. Discover the vision, conflict, and resilience that shaped a century of health care through the struggle of those determined to save lives.
Author Biography
Carlton Houston is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and storyteller whose work is distinguished by its clarity, restraint, and cinematic precision. A former television reporter and anchor, he is known for transforming complex histories into narratives that reveal both human vulnerability and structural truth. Shaped in part by a family legacy tied to Houston's historic medical community, Houston's writing is marked by a commitment to illuminating stories that have long existed in the margins of American history. Houston Negro Hospital, the Untold Legacy of Riverside General is his debut work of long-form narrative nonfiction.
