Bessie Smith was taken to the G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness. After her death, an often repeated, but now discredited story emerged that she died because a whites-only hospital in Clarksdale refused to admit her. The jazz writer and producer John Hammond gave this account in an article in the November 1937 issue of "DownBeat" magazine. The circumstances of Smith's death and the rumor reported by Hammond formed the basis for Edward Albee's 1959 one-act play "The Death of Bessie Smith".