On this day in 1937 Bessie Smith, the great blues singer was in a car that was involved in an accident. She had her left arm almost torn off in the accident. After a delay of 25 minutes (and another accident during which a car plowed in to the attending doctor’s car) Bessie was taken to hospital in an ambulance.

She was then turned away by a ‘whites only’ hospital and then died.

John Hammond the noted producer and jazz writer confidently put this version of the story forward in later in the year in a magazine article and it has always enjoyed a lot of currency. It is the story that I heard and have always repeated. However, it seems as if this version is wrong.

The accident happened, the second accident happened, her severe injuries happened. An ambulance was called and did take her to a hospital in Clarkesdale. However, in 1970 the attending doctor Dr Hugh Smith (no relation) gave a detailed account of the accident to Smith’s biographer. Bessie was taken to the ‘black’ hospital where her arm was amputated but she died without regaining conciousness.

Deadful that it would be if she had been turned away by a ‘whites only’ hospital the truth is even more chilling.

As doctor Smith said in 1970; “The Bessie Smith ambulance would not have gone to a white hospital, you can forget that. Down in the Deep South cotton country, no ambulance driver, or white driver, would even have thought of putting a colored person off in a hospital for white folks”.

So, it is not that one person turned a dieing black person away. It is that the whole culture would have prevented anyone from taking a her to a white hospital in the first place. No one would have ever dreamt of taking her to a white hospital ever taking her even if it was within yards of the accident.