Beulah Marshall Munford Wiley (1923-1987)

F-85

Beulah M. Wiley, a 1941 Cumberland Training School graduate, was a Black healthcare pioneer. She led an intensive campaign to establish the Central Virginia Community Health Center (CVCHC), which opened here in 1970. This was the state’s first community health facility funded by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, created in 1964 as part of the War on Poverty. The drive for community healthcare emerged from the Civil Rights Movement. The CVCHC was a product of Wiley’s activism and brought high-quality care to underserved families in Buckingham, Cumberland, and Fluvanna Counties. It later expanded into a broad network of facilities serving tens of thousands of patients annually.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Farmville Herald, 17 March, 1967, 13 Aug. 1971, 3 June 1987, 12 Aug. 1994, 4 Aug. 2010, 21 Nov. 2012, 21 Aug. 2020. The Informant, Aug. 2012. Chronicles: The Community Health Center Story: https://www.chcchronicles.org/stories/community-health-centers-chronicling-their-history-and-broader-meaning U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Health Center Program: Partnering with Communities to Build a Healthier Nation (May 2024). https://bphc.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bphc/about/health-center-program-history-full-report.pdf Central Virginia Health Services: https://www.cvhsinc.org/about/cvhs Bonnie Lefkowitz, Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People who Made it Happen (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007). Thomas J. Ward Jr., Out in the Rural: A Mississippi Health Center and its War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).