Cora Anderson Negro Hospital
Temple, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Officially opened on May 17, 1953, Cora Anderson Negro Hospital offered medical services to the growing African American population of Temple and Greater Bell County. The hospital featured 16 patient rooms and a surgical suite. It was located only two blocks from Scott & White Hospital and Clinic, thereby providing African American patients access to technology and specialized care that was previously denied to them. The hospital was administered by a Public Advisory Board comprised of an equal number of African American and white citizens. Final decisions were made by the Scott & White Board of Trustees. U. S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson served on the Scott & White Board of Trustees at this time and partook in the fundraising campaign. Cora Woods Campbell Anderson, the largest individual donor to the campaign, was known community-wide for her commitment to helping out college students and families with financial issues and generously giving to the Negro Hospital Project. The Advisory Board unanimously agreed to name the facility after her. Once the facility opened, Scott & White physicians provided care, but the nurses and support staff were overwhelmingly African American. The hospital operated until December 1963 when Scott & White moved to integrate facilities at South 31st Street. In late 1969, the Bell County Commissioners Court acquired the building. Now called the Cora Anderson Building of the Bell County Health District, the Public Health District runs the facility as an outpatient health clinic, though it preserves the building’s original mission of serving the poor and disenfranchised.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Opened in May 1953, the Cora Anderson Negro Hospital gave Temple's growing African American community access to modern medical care just two blocks from Scott & White, which had previously been denied to them. Governed by an advisory board with equal Black and white membership and supported by donors including trustee Lyndon B. Johnson, the hospital was named for its largest individual donor, Cora Woods Campbell Anderson. It served until December 1963, when Scott & White integrated its facilities, and the building continues today as a public health clinic.
Why it matters
The hospital captures both the injustice of medical segregation and the community effort to overcome it, on the eve of hospital integration in Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In May 1953, when the Cora Anderson Negro Hospital opened its doors, the American South still lived under segregation, and medicine was no exception. Hospitals, waiting rooms, and wards were routinely divided by race, and African American patients were frequently denied access to the specialized care and advanced technology that white patients could receive. This was the world before the great civil rights victories of the following decade.
Temple was, by then, a Central Texas city with a notable medical reputation, anchored by the Scott & White Hospital and Clinic. Yet the presence of first-rate medicine two blocks away meant little to Black residents if the door was closed to them. The new hospital was built precisely to bridge that gap — to bring modern care within reach of a community that had been shut out of it.
The early 1950s were a hinge moment. The legal architecture of segregation still stood, but pressure against it was building; the Supreme Court's school-desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education came just the year after this hospital opened. Institutions like this one existed in the tension between an unjust present and a changing future.
People & events
The hospital carried the name of Cora Woods Campbell Anderson, its largest individual donor, a woman known across the community for her generosity — helping college students, supporting families in financial trouble, and giving freely to the effort to build the hospital. When the advisory board chose a name, they chose hers unanimously, an honor that reflected how much her giving had meant.
The project drew support from across racial lines in a way that was itself notable for the time. The hospital was overseen by a public advisory board with equal numbers of Black and white members, though final authority rested with the Scott & White Board of Trustees. Serving on that board during the fundraising campaign was U.S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who took part in the effort — a decade before he would sign the landmark civil rights and Medicare legislation of his presidency.
Inside its sixteen patient rooms and surgical suite, Scott & White physicians provided the care, while the nurses and support staff were overwhelmingly African American — a workplace and a caregiving community rooted in the people it served. The hospital operated until December 1963, when Scott & White moved to integrate its facilities, and in that transition the building's original, separate mission gave way to the fuller inclusion it had helped make thinkable.
Its place in the American story
This hospital tells the two-sided truth of the segregation era in a single building. On one side is the injustice: a modern medical center standing just two blocks away, its care withheld from Black patients by the customs and laws of the day. On the other is the response — a community organizing, giving, and building to secure for itself what had been denied.
Its closing is as significant as its opening. The hospital served only until 1963, when integration made a separate facility unnecessary. That short life span is the point: institutions like this one were both a remedy for segregation and, ultimately, a casualty of its defeat. They were meant to become obsolete, and this one did.
The involvement of Lyndon Johnson adds a thread that runs straight to the national stage. The senator who helped raise money for a segregated-era hospital in Temple would, as president, sign the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare. The local story and the national one are the same story, seen from different heights.
If you visit
The building still stands and still serves, which is rare and moving for a place with this history. Now known as the Cora Anderson Building of the Bell County Health District, it operates as an outpatient clinic — meaning the structure has kept faith with its founding purpose of caring for the poor and disenfranchised, even as the world around it changed.
As you visit, take note of how close it sits to the larger medical campus nearby. That short distance is the whole story in physical form: care that was once unreachable across two city blocks, and a community that refused to accept the gap. Standing between the two, you can feel the history in the geography.
This is a meaningful stop for anyone tracing the civil rights story in Texas, and it rewards a respectful, unhurried visit. Read the marker, look at the building still doing good work, and consider how a place born of exclusion became a monument to the community that overcame it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Cora Woods Campbell Anderson
- · Lyndon Baines Johnson
Themes & tags
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