This February, we’re excited to celebrate Black History Month by lifting up the stories of people, places, and organizations that have shaped Kansas City neighborhoods in powerful ways. Each Friday throughout the month, we’ll be sharing a spotlight that connects Black history to our work today through the lens of our pillars: Leadership & Governance, Planning & Development, Technology & Communications, Health & Safety, and our newest pillar, Culture, Creativity & History.
Dr. Thomas C. Unthank, Kansas City’s Black Physician
You may have thought that Kansas City’s first Black physician was Dr. John Edward Perry. For some, perhaps, you believe it to be Dr. Samuel U Rogers. But Dr. Thomas C. Unthank holds this great distinction of being the City’s groundbreaking Black physician.
Thomas was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1866, the son of enslaved parents. In 1894, he enrolled in the Howard University Medical School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and graduated in 1898. The same year, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to start his medical career as a general surgeon. Unthank would go on to help open the historic Lange Hospital (1227 Michigan Ave.), and the Douglass Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, and the Jackson Home for Aged Negroes, and he would serve twice as the superintendent of General Hospital No. 2.
In 1903, Kansas City suffered a major flood that would help change the course of Dr. Unthank’s life and the city’s medical landscape. With many flood victims sick and injured, Dr. Unthank, along with several other physicians, including Dr. John Edward Perry and Dr. S.H. Thompson, was commissioned to provide aid to the victims. Upon witnessing the inequities in how Black patients were treated, Dr. Unthank and his close associates began to formulate a plan to establish an all-Black medical facility where patients would be treated with respect and receive quality healthcare.
At that time, City Hospital – known as General Hospital No. 1 (now Truman Medical Hospital, now University Health) – was deteriorating. Doctor Unthank persuaded the City to allow Black patients to be treated in the “Colored Division” of the hospital while the white patients were being moved to a newer facility. The building was renamed General Hospital No. 2, the first public hospital in the United States to be used exclusively for Black patients, but the Black doctors were not allowed to serve as staff members of their own newly formed hospital. It wasn’t until 1914 that four Black doctors were finally allowed to treat their patients at General Hospital No. 2.
Thomas C. Unthank, M.D., died in 1932 at the age of 66, leaving a rich medical and healthcare legacy that we continue to benefit from every day.
To learn more, here are additional resources:
Missouri Valley Special Collection, Hospitals – John Lange, Item 31525
https://www.paullaurencedunbar.org/2022/s318
Sonny Gibson Interview https://www.pbs.org/video/sonny-gibsons-pursuit-of-local-black-history-n5wz9v/
https://aahtkc.org/thomas-c-unthank
Sources:
KC LINC, Black History Stories LINC
Health Forward Foundation, https://healthforward.org/story/no-quality-without-equity-no-equity-without-quality/
http://kchistory.org/content/biography-thomas-c-unthank-1866-1932-physician
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