Before integration, segregation shaped where Black patients could receive care, where Black physicians could practice and what kinds of medical institutions could exist. In response, a network of Black-run hospitals, clinics and mutual aid systems emerged across Oklahoma, operating quietly and leaving few surviving records decades later. By the late 20th century, most had disappeared.
What remains are scattered archives, family histories and memories of physicians such as Dr. William L. Haywood and Dr. W.H. Slaughter, whose hospitals once served as lifelines for Black Oklahomans shut out of white-run facilities.
Historians say those institutions were both a response to exclusion and a reflection of community self-reliance.
“I would say Black people, because of medical segregation, experienced real hardship and many more fatalities than they would have had they been allowed to go to hospitals that white people were able to go to,” said historian Karlos Hill, regents’ professor of African and African-American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “Medical segregation really shaped the lives of Black people in Oklahoma.”
‘There was a real need for mutual aid’
Prior to integration, Oklahoma City’s medical landscape mirrored that of many cities across the Great Plains and the South. Hospitals and physicians were largely segregated by race, leaving Black patients with limited options and Black doctors with few places to admit or treat patients.
Some physicians responded by creating their own facilities.
“I would say these smaller, physician-run hospitals were pretty common throughout the West at this time — especially for African Americans,” said Benjamin Folger, a doctoral researcher in history at OU. “Beside the obvious reason being segregation, many physicians opened their offices (…) and found a need for a separate space for surgeries, et cetera, leading to these smaller, private hospitals.”
Those facilities often functioned as full community centers, not merely stopgaps.
“I would guess that, because of their location and neighboring Black businesses, they operated as community hubs,” Folger said.
In neighborhoods such as Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce, doctors’ offices, pharmacies and hospitals clustered alongside barbershops, churches and fraternal lodges. Mutual aid societies and burial associations filled gaps left by exclusion from white-run insurance systems and hospitals.
“Because of the exclusion that Black people faced, there was a real need for mutual aid, (…) burial insurance, all these things that typically Black people were excluded from,” Hill said.
Within that system, physicians such as Haywood and Slaughter became central figures. From Folger’s perspective, Haywood’s career and philanthropy placed him among the most influential Black physicians in early 20th-century Oklahoma City.
“Both he and Dr. Slaughter established reliable medical care for Black Oklahomans and were active participants in the community,” Folger said.
Facilities such as the Haywood-founded Utopia Hospital, also known at times as Douglass Hospital, provided surgical care, maternity services and emergency treatment to patients who might otherwise have been turned away. These hospitals operated within tight constraints: limited funding, segregated infrastructure and a patient population with fewer financial resources. Yet they filled a critical gap.
“These institutions weren’t just replicas of what white institutions would do,” Hill said. “These are institutions that, on their own — in their own right — deserve to be talked about, because they have really powerful missions to elevate community.”
‘They kind of fade away’: Historians, families fight to preserve past
Integration expanded access to previously white-only hospitals, but it also reshaped Black-run institutions.
As patients gained the option to seek care at larger, better-resourced facilities, many small hospitals struggled to remain open. The same forces that led to integration — changing laws, funding patterns and professional opportunities — contributed to the decline of Black-owned hospitals.
“Even with the change occurring, access remained a problem. Quality care has remained a problem,” Hill said.
Some physicians gained new admitting privileges and moved into integrated systems. Others saw their hospitals close as patient volumes shifted and financial pressures mounted.
By the late 20th century, many of Oklahoma City’s Black hospitals had disappeared. Buildings were repurposed or demolished. Records scattered into family collections and private archives.
The disappearance of these institutions mirrors the broader loss of many Black-run community systems across the state, particularly as state highway projects and urban renewal demolished parts of Greenwood in Tulsa and the Deep Deuce in OKC.
“That’s the story for a lot of Black institutions,” Hill said. “They kind of fade away.”
Still, historians and descendants say the institutions’ legacies remain visible in the communities they served and in the lives of the physicians who built them.
Today, researchers and families are piecing together that history through photographs, oral histories and surviving documents. Their work suggests the segregated medical system in Oklahoma City was not simply a temporary workaround but a complex network of care, entrepreneurship and community support. Understanding that system, historians say, can help illuminate the resilience of Black medical professionals and the lasting inequities that have shaped health care access in Oklahoma.
Within that segregated medical landscape, physicians like Haywood built institutions that became anchors for Black patients and professionals.
Family members said that, when Haywood helped establish Utopia Hospital, it opened as a small facility with only a few beds but expanded over time amid demand. The hospital provided care for Black patients who were often unable to receive treatment in white hospitals, and it served as a place where Black nurses and staff could train and work.
Michael Wisby, Haywood’s great-great nephew, said the doctor viewed medical care as a moral obligation.
“Everyone, no matter what skin tone or financial status, deserves proper medical care,” Wisby said. “I think he demonstrated that by his life.”
Relatives described the hospital as more than a clinical space, one that functioned as a community institution during an era when exclusion shaped daily life. The hospital provided care for patients who might otherwise have been turned away during segregation, Haywood’s family members said. It relied on a small staff, but care often extended beyond formal titles.
“Other than what it says about him having two graduate nurses and four nurse aides (…) a lot of Black women took on that role to be the caretaker,” said Renita Wisby, who is married to Michael Wisby. “As a community, that’s just what people did.”
Relatives also point to nurse Opaline Wadkins as a key figure in expanding the OKC’s Black medical workforce. As the lead nurse, she organized a training program for practical nurses at Douglass High School and trained more than 200 nurses between 1949 and 1953.
Family members said Haywood continued practicing medicine for decades and later worked within segregated sections of larger hospitals as the city’s medical system evolved. They described him as deeply embedded in civic and church life, as well.
Today, Haywood’s descendants say they are working to preserve that history. His family has formed a nonprofit organization aimed at documenting Haywood’s life and the broader Black medical system in Oklahoma City. They hope to establish an interpretive center in the coming year that would highlight the role of segregated Black hospitals and the professionals who sustained them.
The family continues to steward Haywood’s estate and personal papers, viewing them not simply as heirlooms but as part of a larger historical record.
“It gives hope,” said Yolanda McCormick, Haywood’s great-great niece. “It’s very important to know the past, because it shows there’s a future.”
