RALEIGH - The Raleigh City Council dedicated Leonard Medical School and Hospital as its latest historic landmark, honoring the school built to train African-American doctors.

Flora Hatley Wadlington, assistant professor of history at Shaw University and commissioner on the of the city historic commission, says the school served as an important institution for African-Americans throughout the South as one of the few places that would train black doctors.

"If you think about this period of Jim Crow and segregation, it gives African-American men the opportunity to render health care to an African-American community that was really without it," Wadlington says.

And Leonard attracted students not only from across North Carolina, but across the South, according to Wadlington.

Leonard Medical Hospital and School trained doctors at Shaw University after the Civil War and began accepting students in 1881.

"But those students who were admitted were admitted on a provisional basis so sometimes we look at the actual beginning as 1882," Wadlington says.

Wadlington says the "provisional" admission was because of a mix of Shaw originally being a seminary and was only beginning to start other schools and because, during slavery, most African-American men were prevented from getting a traditional education. Wadlington says this made Shaw's founder, Henry Tupper, cautious when starting the school.

"At first, he had to be selective in the first students that made up that class," she says. "He sought out those students who he believed would be able to do well in a medical program."

While the buildings are not currently being used as a hospital or medical school, Wadlington says the Raleigh historic development commission website has information on both Leonard Medical's history and arcitecture. The building was designed by Gaston Alonzo Edwards, the first registered African American architect in state history.