University of Alabama Takes Over Jefferson Hospitals

Well, here we have the beginning of the vast University of Alabama at Birmingham medical center and hospitals that exist today. I found this brief item from December 1944 in my wanderings through old issues of the Gadsden Times saved by my paternal grandmother Rosa Mae Wright. Founded by Josiah Nott and other physicians, the Medical College of Alabama operated in Mobile from 1859 until 1920. In that year the school moved to Tuscaloosa and functioned as a two-year basic sciences program until moved again to Birmingham in 1944. The four-year school opened in September 1945. Students who had finished in Tuscaloosa had to leave Alabama to finish their medical degrees. As this brief article notes, plans for the medical school and center in Birmingham were already underway. In 1943 the state legislature had passed the Jones Act to establish and fund a school. Location in Birmingham was chosen because the large patient populations at Jefferson and Hillman hospitals offered the greatest…