User:Drmies/James Hale (died 1888)

James Hale (1829-1888) was a contractor and businessman in Montgomery, Alabama, who thrived in the period after the American Civil War and became one of the richest African American man in the city. He was instrumental in developing the Montgomery neighborhood of Madison Park; in moving the Lincoln Normal School to Montgomery, where it became Alabama State University; and in providing the funds to build Hale Infirmary, the first hospital for Black staff and patients.

Biography
James "Jim" Hale was born into slavery in 1829, on the plantation of a Dr. William Owen Baldwin. He was manumitted by Baldwin and remained with him. He had learned carpentry and gotten married, a few times; his last marriage was to a woman called Anna. Baldwin and Hale were business partners, and soon Hale established himself in Montgomery as a contractor.

Hale's daughter Anne married Cornelius N. Dorsette, often considered the first Black doctor licensed to practice in the state.

With many other prominent Blacks he argued for a "Colored University" in Montgomery, and he was one of the speakers in a meeting at the Old Ship African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in May 1887, where the purpose was to come up with an offer for the board of trustees of the Lincoln Normal School in Marion to move the school to Montgomery. In July, the board decided in favor of Montgomery over Birmingham, and Hale was hailed as one of the leaders of that successful effort.

He died on 16 June 1888; his funeral was held at the Old Ship AME Church, and was said to be largest ever in Montgomery.

Hale Infirmary
In the 1880s Montgomery did not have a hospital for Black patients. Hale's widow provided financing for the boarding house he owned on Lake Street to be remodeled into a hospital. This became Hale Infirmary, run by his son-in-law, Dorsette, the first hospital in Montgomery for African American patients, staffed by African American doctors and nurses.

Madison Park
Madison Park is a neighborhood some fifteen minutes from downtown Montgomery. It was founded in 1880 by formerly enslaved people who bought up 1,000 acres of land and opened it up for Black families. Land was donated for the Union Chapel AME Zion Church, which in 1960 was the place where community members were tutored in order to pass the voting literacy test. The Old Elam Baptist Church (one of the city's oldest churches, with James McLemore as one of its founders ) is nearby, and the two churches often organized picnics together from the 1940s on.