The Metro Historical Commission voted unanimously Monday to approve a new marker in honor of Dr. Josie Wells. It will be placed outside Nashville General Hospital.
Wells was one of the first three women to graduate from Meharry Medical College in 1904. She went on to be the first woman to serve in a leadership position at Meharry, and helped raise funds to open Hubbard Hospital, which eventually merged with Nashville General. She also became the superintendent of the hospital.
She’s widely regarded as one of Nashville’s first practicing female doctors, and she specialized in caring for women and children.
The historical commission also approved a marker to remember the Nashville Blue Triangle. It was a branch of the YWCA that served the African American community. It had 700 members before Nashville’s YWCAs desegregated in the ’60s. That marker will be on Pearl Street near Watkins Park, the site of the Blue Triangle’s headquarters beginning in the mid-1950s.