Black Angels

Black Angels

  • <p>African American nurses at Seaview Hospital. Image courtesy of WOSU Radio.</p>
  • <p>Seaview Nurse. Image courtesy of the Seaview Hospital Archives.</p>

Coming soon: Read The Black Angels: The Untold Stories of the Nurses who helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios. Learn more at: https://tinyurl.com/y3m9hykg.

"In 1929, when white nurses staged a walk out at Seaview, Staten Island’s 2000-bed TB sanatorium, New York was threatened with a public health catastrophe. Desperate, city health officials made a radical decision to sanction a national call for “colored nurses.” Lured by the promise of good pay, education, housing and most of all, a “rare opportunity” to work in a hospital free of quotas and segregated wards, women from all over the country boarded trains and buses and walked out of their lives and into a world that held both hope and danger. Their triumphant story, bringing together medicine, politics, racial strife, women’s rights and cutting-edge science, has up until now been almost completely ignored." - Press Release for the forthcoming book. Courtesy of mariasmilios.com.

Read more about the Black Angels being honored, and Virginia Allen, the last surviving Angel at: https://tinyurl.com/y42vptl8and https://tinyurl.com/y4c8bmm9.