Money versus mission at an African-American medical school: Knoxville College Medical Department, 1895-1900

Knoxville College Medical Department (KCMD) was, to all appearances, a miss ionary medical school established in 1895 by a small black Presbyterian col lege in the Tennessee mountains to train African-American physicians. In re ality, it functioned as a proprietary medical school organized and operated by a group of local white physicians who were more interested in making mo ney than in furthering the school's mission of educating black Christian ph ysicians. KCMD limped along until 1900 when the college's new president rep orted to the trustees about the white faculty's greed, irreligious behavior , poor teaching, and bad medical reputation, and about how the presence of the medical school on campus undermined the college's overall mission. KCMD graduated two students before closing its doors in 1900. A group of facult y then reopened the school off-campus as the Knoxville Medical College. Tha t school closed in 1910.