Flint-Goodridge Hospital and Dillard University thrived under the leadership of Albert Walker Dent.
As the hospital’s business manager and superintendent, and as Dillard’s third president, Dent “improved education and health care for African-Americans and impoverished people in the Deep South,” Black Art Story states.
Dent, born in Atlanta in 1904, earned an accounting degree from Morehouse College in 1926. He was a branch office auditor for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company before serving the dual role at the hospital.
In 1931, Dent married Ernestine Jessie Covington, a concert pianist from Houston. They had three sons.
According to Tulane University, Dent introduced the “Penny-A-Day” hospitalization plan – “the predecessor to all health insurance plans in the United States” – in 1936. The insured paid $3.65 a year for up to 21 days of hospitalization. By the end of 1938, 3,231 people had joined the plan. After Flint-Goodridge joined the Hospital Association of New Orleans’ citywide insurance plan, “Penny-A-Day” ended in 1943.
“Under Dent’s leadership,” Tulane states, “Flint-Goodridge not only made its presence felt in New Orleans, but the hospital also actively promoted better standards of health care in other parts of the country. As a result, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Hospital Administrators, the first African American so honored.”
From 1941 to 1969, Dent served as Dillard’s president.
He “proved to be as efficient in the management of the university as he had been at the hospital,” Tulane states. “He strengthened the faculty, increased the academic offerings, raised the endowment and established a college nursing program.”
According to Black Past, Dent completed Dillard’s building program and helped to establish the United Negro College Fund in 1944. Dillard’s new health and physical education building was renamed Albert Walter Dent Hall in 1973.
Dent died in 1984.
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