Homer G. Phillips was an influential lawyer and civil rights activist from Sedalia, Missouri. He attended Howard University Law School in Washington, DC, and later established a successful law practice in St. Louis.
In 1919, Phillips co-founded the Civil Liberties League, an African American political organization representing Black interests in the Progressive wing of the Republican party. In the early 1920s, he co-founded the St. Louis Negro Bar Association, later known as the Mound City Bar Association. He defended many African Americans in criminal cases following the 1917 race riots in East St. Louis, and in 1922, Phillips led the demand for a hospital for the Black community. His efforts led to the construction of Homer G. Phillips Hospital and School for Nursing, which opened several years after his death. The hospital served Black residents and trained Black medical professionals until the early 1980s.
When the City of St. Louis enacted a segregation ordinance in 1916, Phillips and the local branch of the NAACP filed for a temporary injunction on the ordinance. US District Judge David Dyer granted the injunction until Buchanan v. Warley could be the US Supreme Court. The Buchanan v. Warley decision set the precedent that ordinances that prohibited the sale or purchase of properties by Blacks in white-majority neighborhoods violated Fourteenth Amendment protections.
Phillips was attacked and killed by several men with guns while waiting for a streetcar on June 18, 1931. The motive behind his assassination remains unknown.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital and School of Nursing was a historic institution in St. Louis that served the African American community from 1937 to 1979. It was a fully equipped hospital and training facility for Black doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals during a time when opportunities for African Americans in these fields were limited. The hospital, named after the lawyer who championed its creation, was a vital part of the Ville neighborhood and a source of pride for the Black community.
Restored sections of the former hospital now serves as a neighborhood health care center and a residential care facility for older adults.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital Emergency Room. Dr. R. C. Haskell on left with glasses. Haksell was the first manager of the City Hospital No. 2 before Homer G. Phillips opened.
Horizontal, black and white photograph showing a group portrait of African American nursing students and nursing staff wearing their uniforms, probably at City Hospital #2. The group is posed in three rows in front of the entrance to a large stone building.
Not only were the hospitals in Mill Creek Valley dedicated to providing services to the African American community but they strived to advance education and employment opportunities for women of color. The image portrayed here depicts the first nurse graduates from City Hospital #2 in the year 1919. Over the next forty-nine years, the hospital saw a number of graduates walk through their doors, it wasn’t until 1940 that they finally witnessed the hospital’s first African American superintendent of nurses.
