Isaac David Burrell was a former slave’s son. Burrell established southern Virginia’s first black-owned drugstore.
Burrell earned his M.D. in 1893 from Shaw University’s Leonard Medical College in Raleigh, North Carolina. After finishing his education, he relocated to southern Virginia and opened a drug store.
Because black patients were denied admission to the city’s white hospitals, he traveled by train the 220 miles to Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he died shortly after undergoing gallstone surgery.
Following Burrell’s death, Roanoke’s black physicians banded together to establish a hospital for their patients. Burrell Memorial Hospital, a ten-bed facility on Henry Street, was named in Burrell’s honor.
The city leased the abandoned Allegheny Institute buildings to the doctors who ran the black hospital there from 1921 until 1955, when a modern brick hospital was built with the help of a woman’s auxiliary. Burrell Memorial Hospital closed in 1978 after the civil rights movement opened white hospitals to black patients.
The city leased the abandoned Allegheny Institute buildings to the doctors who administered the black hospital there from 1921 until 1955, when a modern brick hospital was built with the support of a woman’s auxiliary. Burrell Memorial Hospital closed in 1978 when the civil rights movement opened white institutions to black patients.