NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — During Black History Month, Meharry Medical College will display artifacts from its notable past all around Nashville.
On the second floor of the Tennessee State Library & Archives, three cases are packed with portraits, old medical instruments and stories. Sandra Parham, the executive director of the college's library, designed the displays.
"You can read the history, but when you see the pictures, the old hospital, you see the progress, the buildings, the people... that makes Meharry," said Parham.
The college curated similar exhibits for the Nashville Public Library, Fisk University and Belmont University.
Parham said the college's story, including the birth of Metro General Hospital, originally Hubbard Hospital, is Nashville's story too.
"It was just a vacuum for diseases and stuff, so we knew we needed a hospital," Parham said.
Teaching the next generation a little more about Meharry, a college that's made a big difference in the community during COVID-19, is the goal of these exhibits.
"There should be no reason that we have a child who goes to middle or elementary school that doesn't know that you have a HBCU hospital that was started in 1876 for enslaved people [and] that have come this far," Parham said.
