Bessie Smith's Death
Bessie Smith Photographs by Carl Van Vechten: Picture 8
Pictures in this series: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Index
If the life of Bessie Smith was dramatic and subject to mythology, her death was even more so. By 1937, her recording career was picking up again, she was recording in the new swing style, and blues music was making something of a comeback. Her relationship with Richard Morgan was going well, and her personal life was calmer.
On September 26, 1937, Bessie Smith and Richard Morgan were driving from Memphis to the location in Mississippi where she was to perform the next day. Morgan rear-ended a truck at high speed, and the tailgate of the truck went through the car's roof. Bessie Smith's arm was nearly separated at the elbow, and she had some head injuries; the physician who stopped at the scene, Dr. Hugh Smith, later attributed her death to massive injuries to her entire right side, which had borne the brunt of the crash impact. But she was still, at this point in the day, alive.
Dr. Smith and a friend traveling with him moved Smith off of the road, and the friend went to a house to call an ambulance. With Bessie Smith in shock, Dr. Smith began preparing to take her in the car to a hospital, when another car coming down the road hit the doctor's car, wrecking it. Finally, two ambulances arrived; one, for the white hospital, called by a truck driver who had not seen who was involved in the crash, and the other, for the black hospital.
Contrary to popular mythology, which had Bessie Smith rejected by a white hospital, the ambulance took her to G. T. Thomas African American Hospital. Despite amputation of her arm, she never regained consciousness, and Bessie Smith died the next day.
Bessie Smith's funeral on October 4, 1937, was attended by seven thousand people, and ten thousand had viewed her coffin the day before.
Bessie Smith's grave remained without a marker until 1970. Her husband, James Gee, whom she had never divorced, took what money was given for that, for himself. Juanita Green, who had worked for Bessie Smith as a child, and the singer Janis Joplin, paid for the tombstone in 1970.
Images of Bessie Smith courtesy of Library of Congress
