Health & Healthcare

The Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California was established on September 26, 1892 in Oakland, California and was the first institution to provide elderly care and housing for African Americans in California. The organization was created by Mary E.A. Cole, Ann S. Purnell, Elenora Amos, Areminto Stanford, Mary Goodman, Rosa H. Lockett, Mary C. Washington, Ellen Whiting, Harriet E. Smith, Mary J. Humphrey, and Anna Williams to “sustain a home for the aged and infirm who may be from any cause, incapacitated from taking care of themselves, and such others as the Board of Directors or trustees may think entitled to its benefits.” The Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored People of California Records consists of articles of incorporation, constitution and by-laws, correspondence, meeting minutes, reports, programs, and newspaper clippings documenting the history of the home from its creation in 1892 through its dissolution in 1940. View online items Dates: 1892-1940   Collection number: MS 122   Creator: Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California (Oakland, Calif.).   Collection Size: 1.25 linear feet (2 boxes)   Guide to the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California Records Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.

Notebook belonging to T. Smith of Oakland's Homeopathic Hospital and containing penciled manuscript notes on remedies prescribed and patients seen. The Homeopathic Hospital was located on the southeast corner of Twenty-first and Market Streets, in Oakland, California. (OHC COLL 2026-18) 1 v.; 16 cm Available at Oakland History Center, Main Library.  

    Dates: 1938-1994   Collection number: MS 55   Creator: Middleton, Bernice.   Collection Size: .5 linear feet (1 box)   Guide to the Bernice Middleton Papers Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) Bernice Middleton (1915-2002) was born in 1915 in Arkansas to Rev. T.J. and Pearline Middleton. After graduating with an R.N. license from the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps she moved to California where she worked as a nurse in the armed forces. Following the outbreak of World War II, she moved to San Francisco to work at a veterans’ hospital in 1943. After working as a nurse at various hospitals and private practices in San Francisco in the 1940s, she returned to school at Wilberforce University in Ohio and after graduation took a position as Assistant Dean of Women at Morris Brown University in Atlanta, Georgia in 1953. Returning to California, she was appointed Dean of Girls at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, where she taught for the next seven years, before teaching at Ceres Unified School District (1960-1967) and Modesto Junior College. The Bernice Middleton papers include certificates, correspondence, photographs, meeting minutes, funeral programs, newspaper clippings, and a handwritten autobiography documenting the life and career of Bernice Middleton (1915-2002). We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.

Dates: 1965-1968   Collection number: MS 198   Creator: Oakland Economic Development Council (Calif.)   Collection Size: 2 linear feet (1 oversized box)   Guide to the Oakland Economic Development Council Newsletter Collection Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) View online items The Oakland Economic Development Council was a local agency established in 1965 to implement programs associated with the Office of Economic Opportunity and the ‘War on Poverty’ in Oakland, California. The council’s programs were funded through Office of Economic Opportunity and Ford Foundation grants and were administered at Neighborhood Service Centers in North Oakland, West Oakland, East Oakland, and Fruitvale. Programs included family planning clinics, preventative health programs, legal aid services, job training, remedial instruction, small business development, dental and eye services, head start and day care, youth employment, and emergency aid and housing for women and children. We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.

Dates: circa 1910s-1972   Collection number: MS 212   Collector: Martin Pinder, Jean M.   Collection Size: .75 linear feet (1 box)   Guide to the Jean M. Martin Pinder Papers Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) Jean M. Martin Pinder (1916-2014) was among the first African American women to graduate from the Yale School of Public Health and an advocate for health education policy and population family planning policy in pre- and early post-Independence-era Africa. The Jean M. Martin Pinder papers consist of various certificates and recognitions, photographs of Simms Martin family members, and a copy of Pinder’s 1935 San Francisco State University Franciscan yearbook inscribed by classmates and faculty. We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.

A collection of newspaper clippings on the COVID-19 pandemic with a particular focus on the San Francisco Bay Area and Oakland. Clippings are primarily from the San Francisco Chronicle. Other sources include the Montclarion and the East Bay Express. The collection also includes some printouts of advisories, orders and statistics issued by the Alameda County Health Department and by the city of Oakland in the early months of the pandemic. In general, press coverage peaked in the first months of the pandemic and spiked again with the appearance of the Delta and Omicron variants of the virus.   (OHC COLL 2022-2)   26 folders in 3 boxes (1.5 linear feet)   Go here for a more detailed list of this collection's contents.  Available at Oakland History Center, Main Library.  

Nurse and educator Thelma Gibson Radden (1903-2004) was born on February 18, 1903 in Oakland, California to Charles Nelson Gibson and Maude Esther Gibson. She was a fourth-generation Californian with her family tracing their roots in the state to 1864, when her great-grandfather Nelson Ray moved to Placerville, California from Lexington, Missouri. Born a slave on the Verlinder Ray Plantation, he was freed following the death of his slave owner and he purchased the freedom of his wife, Lucinda Ray, and their three daughters after arriving in California and they were reunited as a family in Sacramento in 1877. The Thelma Gibson Radden papers consist of photographs, correspondence, artifacts, clothing, ephemera, and legal records documenting her life and professional career as a nurse and her family’s long history in California and Michigan. View online items Dates: circa 1880s-2004   Collection number: MS 206   Creator: Radden, Thelma Gibson   Collection Size: 8.75 linear feet (9 boxes + 2 oversized boxes)   Guide to the Thelma Gibson Radden Papers Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.

William M. Watts (1885-1980) was born on February 15, 1885 in Lodi, Texas to Perry and Jane Watts. After earning a medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, Watts practiced medicine at hospitals in Houston, Texas and Fresno, California before opening W.M. Watt's Private Hospital, the first hospital for African Americans in Oakland, California in 1926 at 3437 Harlan Street in North Oakland. While in Oakland, Watts contributed to Western American, a local African American newspaper, the medical advice column How to Keep Well. The hospital closed due to financial troubles in 1927, and Watts returned to Marshall, Texas to operate the Sheppard-Watts Hospital following the death of his brother. Watts continued to practice as a physician until his retirement in the late 1960s. The William M. Watts papers include photographs, patient and account ledger, license applications, newspapers clippings, funeral program, and one edition of the Jackson County Medical Journal. View online items Dates: circa 1910s-1980   Collection number: MS 37   Creator: Watts, William M., Dr.   Collection Size: .5 linear feet (2 boxes)   Guide to the William M. Watts Papers Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO) We encourage researchers to contact AAMLO before visiting so that we can be prepared to assist you. Please call 510-637-2000 or email aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org to arrange an appointment or inquire about access.