Righting the past: Viola Washington Edwards, pioneering health care provider, dead at 70

​​Editor’s note: This is the twelfth in a series of historical obituaries written today to honor the men and women of the past who were denied the honor at the time of their death because of discrimination due to their race and/or gender.

Viola Edwards, 70, died of heart disease at the Eloise Hospital and Infirmary in Detroit, Michigan, on June 23, 1943. Formerly of Pensacola, she had lived and worked as a nurse in Detroit for over a decade.

Mrs. Edwards was born Viola Eula Washington to Charles and Bettie Washington in Wetumpka, Alabama, on May 26, 1873. Along with her two brothers, Charles and Ivans, Viola lived with her family downtown. Her father worked on a nearby farm, and her mother labored as a domestic servant. Viola went to public school and worked various jobs, including as a cook and a seamstress. She attended the nearby Tuskegee Institute Nurses’ Training School and later lived with her family on Wetumpka’s west side.

On January 12, 1908, Viola Washington married William H. Edwards, a railroad postal clerk, in Pensacola, Florida. He had been widowed in 1906 after his first wife, Lodie Burch Edwards, died from being kicked in the stomach by a cow. Lodie, a schoolteacher, left three children under the age of 10: Charles, Otis and Alzada. Viola became their stepmother while continuing to help with her father and mother in Wetumpka. She also worked as a nurse in the African American section of the Pensacola Infirmary. Though often listed as a separate “Colored Hospital,” this ward of the Infirmary was staffed by African American doctors and nurses serving African American patients.

The Edwardses were prominent Pensacolians. Their attendance at social events, entertainment of visiting guests, and travels were captured in the pages of the Indianapolis Freeman by the paper’s Pensacola correspondent, Walker W. Thomas.

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In 1922, Mrs. Edwards realized her dream to build a hospital focused on the health and welfare of Pensacola’s African American community. It opened to great fanfare on the morning of June 14, 1922. The Pensacola News Journal reported the opening celebration held that evening at Talbot Chapel AME Zion Church consisted of “speeches, addresses, songs, and choruses, rendered by the best talent in the city.” The hospital, located at 513 N. DeVilliers Street, stood next to the Edwardses’ home in the Belmont DeVilliers neighborhood.

Noted science teacher, musician and African-American historian Harold Andrews (1916-2008) described the Viola Edwards Hospital as “a 12-room building equipped with operating and other facilities … located on DeVilliers Street between LaRua and Jackson Streets.” The only known visual representation of the hospital shows its two stories and double porches fronting DeVilliers Street. It was one of seven medical facilities in Pensacola at the time and the only one owned by an African American woman. The Viola Edwards Hospital was the first Black-owned hospital in Pensacola.

Mrs. Edwards employed at least two nurses at the hospital and worked with many physicians and surgeons. The entire medical staff was African American. The community took pride in this establishment. As Pensacola’s Colored Citizen newspaper wrote in June 1924: “Dr. [J. Lee] Pickens has a surgery case in Viola Edwards’ hospital that is showing very satisfactory progress under the care of the nurses of this institution.” While she continued to operate the hospital, she also opened a restaurant, using her experience as a cook to continue her entrepreneurship.

In 1927, the hospital – and Viola – faced financial and legal challenges that would eventually force the facility to close and Viola to flee. In August, a White woman, Dorothy Friederichsen, and her unborn child died at the hospital. Manslaughter charges were filed against Mrs. Edwards and Eugene Tart, the White man who brought Ms. Friederichsen to the hospital. A fire “of incendiary origin” destroyed the hospital two weeks later.

Mrs. Edwards and Mr. Tart were later found not guilty, the question of whether the abortion was self- or medically-induced never being answered. But pressure from Pensacola’s White clergy resulted in new manslaughter charges against them for the unborn child's death. The Escambia County Sheriff arrested Mr. Tart, who posted bond. With her hospital burned and her life threatened, Mrs. Edwards fled to Detroit, Michigan.

In Detroit, Mrs. Edwards connected with Dr. Alfred Thomas, a prominent African American doctor. Mrs. Edwards had worked with Dr. Thomas’s brother, a podiatrist, in Pensacola. Mrs. Edwards worked as a nurse in one of the seven hospitals Dr. Thomas owned in Detroit.

Mrs. Edwards successfully fought extradition on the manslaughter case in Pensacola, claiming she would be “in danger of mob violence if returned.” The manslaughter case was eventually dropped in favor of a federal embezzlement charge. In 1929, she was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to 16 months confinement. She eventually returned to Detroit and her work as a nurse.

Mrs. Edwards suffered from heart disease for six months before her death in 1943. She was interred by the A. G. Wright Funeral Home in Detroit. Mrs. Viola Edwards leaves a legacy of equal access to health and medical care, entrepreneurship and fighting against the odds. Left to celebrate her life today are the descendants of her stepchildren, the Washington family and a grateful Pensacola community.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Viola Washington Edwards, pioneering health care provider, dead at 70