In the fall of 1918, after America and European powers signed the armistice that ended World War I, soldiers from the front lines began returning home.
But they brought with them the most unwelcome souvenir — the Spanish flu. It was so deadly, so virulent, that a person could be well in the morning and dead by sundown.
It was during this time that Dr. David Simpson, Lakeland’s first Black doctor, cemented his reputation when he treated both Black and white patients. That was highly unusual in Florida because the state was under segregation laws and Black and white residents did not mix in stores, at lunch counters, in social settings, in schools or in doctors’ offices. White patients were not seen by Black doctors. But Simpson saw white patients, in part, because one of Lakeland’s only white doctors, Dr. C. W. Love, contracted the deadly virus.
Martha Sawyer, a columnist with The Ledger, wrote in 1990: “There was a great shortage of doctors on the home front then. When Dr. C. W. Love … fell ill with the flu, Simpson went to his home to care for him, as he did with all his other patients.”
Historian R. E. Lufsey wrote in the 1930s about Simpson’s work during the worldwide epidemic.
“[Simpson] received a call one day and when he responded found that it was a family of white people who had called him. He knocked at their door and explained why he was there, telling them that he would be glad to do what he could if their need was urgent,” Lufsey wrote in a history of Polk County. “As there were two persons there ill with the disease who were in critical condition his services were gladly welcomed. Dr. Simpson treated them with such success that both of them recovered.”
Dr. Herman Watson, one of the founders of Watson Clinic, said “Dr. Simpson treated scores of white patients during the World War I influenza epidemic here.”
Lakeland historian LaFancine Burton wrote in The Lakelander that Simpson “was noted in the newspaper in 1917-1918 for coming up with a cure for the Spanish flu. Even though there was segregation at the time, when folks heard that Dr. Simpson could cure the Spanish flu, they started allowing him into their homes to prescribe medication.”
Moving to Lakeland
According to a history of Simpson that appeared in The Ledger, written by Polk County historian Cantor Brown, Simpson was 31 when he graduated in 1908 from Leonard Medical School of Raleigh, North Carolina’s Shaw University. He attended an additional year of college at Brooklyn’s New York Post-Graduate Medical School and then chose Lakeland to open a practice in 1909. His office was located on Rose Street near Kentucky Avenue.
Simpson married Julia Helen Chandler in about 1910, with daughter Bernice following within a year after they exchanged vows. The couple remained together for the rest of their lives.
Simpson was “seen by many Lakelanders as a quiet-spoken, gentle man, (who) offered top-quality medical services within an area that afforded no hospital or clinic facilities for black patients. He also gained statewide influence, especially through the Colored State Medical Association.”
Brown said that Simpson’s early patients “likely included whites despite prevailing racial-segregation patterns. As was true elsewhere, medical-school trained black physicians rated highly at a time when many white physicians possessed little or no formal training.”
Advocating for Black patients
Following the pandemic, Simpson pushed for Black patients to be treated at Morrell Hospital, which has now grown into the sprawling complex of Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.
According to Brown, Simpson came “to represent the very heart and vitality of his chosen home. Already laboring in 1918 for hospital facilities for African-American patients, for instance, he persisted and finally saw the opening in 1926 of the Lakeland Colored Hospital.”
According to a book by Lakeland educator and historian N.E Roberts, “The Evolution of African-Americans (of) Lakeland, Florida,” Morrell Hospital did not originally treat Blacks. Later they were treated in the basement and eventually in a separate building next to Morrell … Initially blacks who had to be hospitalized were taken to a building on North Kettles Avenue, where Oldham Funeral Home now stands,” he wrote. According to a witness, “many died at (that) hospital before it was finally shut down.”
Roberts added that “Doctors would visit Blacks and whites at their homes for $2.50, and some even made their own medicine.”
Dr. Gow Bush requested in May 1959 that Black residents and doctors have equal access to the new hospital because it was funded partially by federal funds.
“The mayor explained the commission has no authority on this matter,” records indicate.
Eventually, Black patients were allowed into what is now Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.
Simpson died on Aug. 21, 1955, and is buried at Tiger Flowers Cemetery along North Lake Parker Avenue. His wife died eight months later.
Brown cited an article in Tampa’s Florida Sentinel: “Here is the kind of man we say our schools and public buildings should be named for.”
Instead of a school or building, Simpson Park is named after the man who cared for everyone.
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