Allen University Hosts Groundbreaking Ceremony for Hospital
Allen University recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital. The hospital is located on campus at 2204 Hampton Street, Columbia, South Carolina.
The Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital was one of only a few hospitals to serve Columbia’s African-American community during the segregation era. It operated in 1952-1973. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it was the only training facility exclusively for black nurses in Columbia.
The renovated and expanded facility will host the Institute on Civility, the newly-approved Levett School of Education, the Dickerson-Green Theological Seminary, and several museum and exhibition spaces.
Along with the forward-looking and innovated programs to be housed in Waverly, the addition will be a permanent memorial to the Emanuel Nine, the nine individuals who tragically lost their lives on June 17, 2015, when a gunman entered Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina during an evening prayer service.
Among those individuals murdered was state Senator Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of Emanuel and a 1995 graduate of Allen University. Two other victims from this incident were also Allen University graduates, the Rev. Daniel Simmons ’67 and Tywanza Sanders ’14.“This will be a transformational project for the campus, the community, and the city,” said President Ernest McNealey. “It will celebrate the lives and legacies of brave and committed people who served the greater good, while at the same time prepare a new generation of students and citizens who will follow similar paths,” he added.
