Tanner House community event spotlights health, wellness, and the life of Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson

This Sunday, the Friends of the Tanner House will launch the People’s Dispensary, the first of a series of arts-inspired community gatherings, to ask North Philadelphia residents to envision the kinds of programs and activities they would like to see at a restored Henry Ossawa Tanner House in the future.

Qiaira Riley, the artist partner working with the Friends group, said she wanted to plan the community gatherings by focusing on different members of the Tanner family.

The Tanner House, named a National Historic Landmark mainly because of the achievements of Henry Ossawa Tanner, an internationally acclaimed artist, is at 2908 W. Diamond St. in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section.

As she prepared for the community gatherings, Riley learned more about Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, one of the artist’s sisters. She was the staff physician at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama between 1891 and 1894.

Riley learned that Dillon Johnson was making speeches and writing journal articles decrying the health disparities and diseases that plagued the local Black residents living in the community around the school at the dawn of the 20th century. Many are still relevant today.

“...This project centers the specific ways Black folks have shaped and reshaped Philadelphia through their cultural contributions.”

In addition to being responsible for the health care of the students and faculty, Dillon Johnson started a nursing school on campus and also opened the Lafayette Dispensary to provide health care to local residents. She was also known for making her own medicines.

“She was doing research and writing about poor health conditions,” Riley said. “And a lot of Black women in Philadelphia today are making herbal medicines.”

In Alabama, Dillon would become the first woman of any ethnicity to be certified to practice medicine in the state after passing a grueling 10-day medical board examination. The exams were described by the New York Times as “unusually severe.”

The young doctor, then known as Halle Tanner Dillon, had graduated with honors from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, and was the only Black woman in its Class of 1891.

In 1894, Tanner Dillon, then a young widow, married John Quincy Johnson, a minister and mathematics teacher at Tuskegee. The couple, who would later have three sons, left Alabama the year after they married when Johnson was named president of Allen University in Columbia, S.C.

Eventually the family moved to Nashville, where Dillon Johnson died in 1901 of dysentery and childbirth complications. She was 37.

The issue of Black women and maternal health care is an important topic today. Thus, the community engagement seminar was inspired by the life and work of Dillon Johnson. The People’s Dispensary will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Hatfield House, 33rd Street and West Girard Avenue in Fairmount Park.

The gathering will begin with a yoga session followed by a drum circle while food is served, Riley said. There will be workshops on family genealogy, farming, birth work (or how to become a doula), herbal medicine, and more. Art experiences will include floral arrangement and aromatherapy activities.

“With Tanner family stories serving as models of possibility and reflection, this project centers the specific ways Black folks have shaped and reshaped Philadelphia through their cultural contributions,” said Christopher R. Rogers, a project lead for the Tanner House and a research fellow at the Center for Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the University of Pennsylvania.

While the People’s Dispensary program on Sunday is free, participants are asked to register here. tannerhousefriends.ticketleap.com The individual workshops are limited to 20 participants each.

The event is also sponsored by the Strawberry Mansion Civic Association, Fairmount Park Conservancy, and the Center for Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS) at the University of Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: Emergency stabilization work finally begins at the historic Henry Ossawa Tanner House

There will be a second Friends of the Tanner House community arts program, “Plastic on the Sofa,” from 1 to 3 p.m. the following Saturday, Oct. 14, at Treehouse Books, 1430 Susquehanna Ave. This community gathering will explore the role of the Black home in contemporary art. It will include an artist talk and collage workshop. People can register here for the Oct. 14 workshop.

The series of community workshops is funded by a $150,000 planning grant the Mellon Foundation awarded to Friends of Tanner House and the CPCRS in May 2023.

“We’re asking people to give us insight about what they see as opportunities to embody a beloved community so that we may reflect those strategies and perspectives in how we pursue the physical revitalization of the Henry Ossawa Tanner House and Friends of the Tanner House programming,” Rogers said.

The Friends of the Tanner House organized in 2021 to raise money to have stabilization work done on the historic house after city officials declared it so badly deteriorated that it was in danger of being demolished.