Today at 11 a.m. Parkland Hospital will name a street after Dr. John Wesley Anderson on the Parkland Memorial Hospital campus at 5200 Harry Hines Blvd. Dallas. The planned speakers include Commissioner John Wiley Price, Dallas County Commissioner’s Court – District 3, Don T. O’Bannon, Esq., Former Vice Chair, Parkland Health Board Managers and Fred Cerise, MD |President & CEO, Parkland Health.
If it’s raining, the event will be moved inside the building entrance immediately adjacent to our planned site
Dr. John Wesley Anderson
John Wesley Anderson was born into slavery in Lexington, Missouri, on September 1, 1861. His father was a White Englishman, his mother a Missouri slave who died when he was three. He was raised by his grandmother, then later by his aunt and uncle in Kansas.
Anderson excelled in school graduating from high school at 16 and from the University of Kansas at 19. After working as a educator for three years, he enrolled in Meharry Medical College in Nashville where he graduated in 1885.
He then traveled to Texas and helped form the Lone Star Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association, one of the earliest organizations of African American medical professionals in the United States.
Anderson ultimately earned his DDS by 1888 and began his Dallas medical practice. He was the third Black doctor to practice in the city. In his early years, he traveled extensively on house treating both the “elite” and the poor.
Dr. Anderson also invested in real estate in 1913, acquired land outside the city limits for a housing project named Lincoln Manor, seen as “an opportunity for Blacks to own land.”
He was also a life-long supporter of the YMCA, donating land and cash to provide some 253 memberships. By 1938 he’d given over 18,000 to the YMCA.
Anderson was said to have treated more than 70,000 patients in his career. On May 30, 1947, he died leaving a daughter, a foster son, and his wife.
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