Sydenham Hospital Protest audio collection

1970s-1980s

Sydenham Hospital was a healthcare facility in Harlem which operated between 1892 and 1980. It was the first fully desegregated hospital in the United States with six African American trustees and twenty African Americans on staff. It was New York City's first full-service hospital to hire African American doctors and nurses, serving mostly African American patients. Sydenham was located at 124th Street and Manhattan Avenue, and moved to West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue around 1924.

In 1979, due to New York City's financial crisis, Mayor Edward I. Koch announced the planned closures of four city hospitals, including Sydenham. While the Koch Administration argued that Sydenham was outdated and wasted money, African American leaders in Harlem viewed the hospital's closing as a loss of both a historic Black institution and accessible health services to the community. At the time, Harlem was designated a medically underserved area and a "health disaster area" by President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano. Dr. Ebun Adelona, a Harlem resident and professional dancer, health advocate, holistic nurse practitioner, and anthropologist, was central in the fight to save Sydenham. She appears multiple times in the collection. After more than a year of lawsuits, lobbying efforts, and protests by municipal hospital unions and Harlem community activists, Sydenham Hospital was closed in late 1980 and eventually turned into a senior residence.

Years after he was no longer mayor, during an interview with Congressman Charles Rangel and LaGuardia and Wagner Archives Director Richard Liebermanthat in 2011, Ed Koch admitted that closing Sydenham was a mistake.