The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults age 0–21 throughout the Atlanta region.

Prominent Atlanta businessman and attorney Hughes Spalding recognized the need for a hospital to serve the Black population and led a movement to change these inadequacies.

[3] Spalding’s desire to help was initially sparked in 1946 when Margaret Mitchell, famed author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Gone With the Wind,” wrote to him to express her concern about the healthcare system available to African Americans in Atlanta.

She had experienced its shortcomings firsthand when her longtime laundress, an African-American woman, neared the final days of her life after a battle with cancer and Mitchell was unable to find a suitable hospital facility for her.

When it finally opened in 1952, the Hughes Spalding Pavilion held more than 130 beds and provided medical care for African American adults and children.