The International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor is a black fraternal organization best known as the sponsor of the Taborian Hospital. It was founded in 1872 in Independence, Missouri, by Moses Dickson, an ex-slave born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 5, 1824. The order's statement of principles pledged to advance "Christianity, education, morality and temperance and the art of governing, self reliance and true manhood and womanhood". Like many other fraternal societies at the time, it offered sickness and burial insurance and a means for members to socialize.
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Taborian Hospital
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| Location: | US 61, jct. of McGinnis St., Mound Bayou, Mississippi |
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| Area: | 2.1 acres (0.85 ha) |
| Built: | 1942 |
| Architect: | McKissack & McKissack |
| Architectural style: | Art Deco |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: |
96000827 [1] |
| Added to NRHP: | August 01, 1996 |
After years of decline, membership surged after 1938, when Perry M. Smith, the Chief Grand Mentor, persuaded the Mississippi Jurisdiction of the order to build a hospital in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. To pay for it, each member paid an annual assessment into a hospital fund. In addition, Smith visited sharecroppers and tenants on plantations throughout Mississippi to raise funds.
The order's Taborian Hospital opened in 1942 to great fanfare. Everyone on the staff, including doctors and nurses, were black. The facilities included two major operating rooms, an x-ray machine, incubators, electrocardiograph, blood bank, and laboratory. Operating costs came almost entirely from membership dues and other voluntary contributions.
The first chief surgeon of the hospital was T.R.M. Howard, who later became an important civil rights leader in Mississippi and mentor to both Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, who was often a patient at the hospital.
After years of financial pressure, the hospital lost its fraternal status in 1967 when the federal government took it over and put it under the authority of the Office of Economic Opportunity. The hospital, renamed as the Mound Bayou Community Hospital, finally closed in 1983.
During the 1990s, the Knights and Daughters of Tabor began a continuing campaign to renovate the original hospital building which has been empty for many years.
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