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Mapping Care Project: The History of Black Nurses in Chicago

Nurses' Dinner at Camp Grant

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Provident Hospital and Training School, 1891-1929
Brown and wonderful with longing
To cure ills of Africa,
Democracy,
And mankind,
Also ills quite common
Among all who stand on two feet.

Langston Hughes wrote these verses in his poem "Interne at Provident" published in 1958. The poem in its entirety spoke to the continuing need of black doctors and nurses to further develop their medical skills and practice their professions and it is no coincidence that Hughes' poem features Provident. Today, Provident Hospital is often described as a living legacy, but to appreciate it as such, one must first acknowledge its origins. At the heart of the 1891 founding of Provident Hospital and Training School in Chicago is the story of a determined black woman eager to hone her craft of service and care in the field of nursing.
Reconstructing A Collective Racial Identity and Battling Jim Crow in the North
Emma A. Reynolds was born in Frankfort, Ohio in 1862. After graduating from Wilberforce University, she worked as a teacher in Kansas City, Missouri where she learned of the dramatic differences in how health care was provided for black Americans. Envisioning a way to bridge that gap, Reynolds began applying to nursing schools but found that she was excluded solely on the basis of her race and color. After being denied admission to every nursing school in Chicago including the Illinois Training School for Nurses and the Cook County School of Nursing, Reynolds and her brother, Reverend Louis H. Reynolds appealed to Dr. Daniel Hale Williams for assistance.1

Shortly thereafter through a collective effort of Chicago's black and white citizens, Provident Hospital and Training School opened its doors on May 4,1891 at 29th and Dearborn to patients and practitioners of all races. Members of the hospital's founding committee recognized the importance of the nursing school and acknowledged its significance in furthering the advancements of black women in nursing. In the first annual report of the training school they proclaimed the hospital's first priority to be "the proper caring for the sick...and secondly and especially, the opening of a new field of useful and noble employment for colored women, who are otherwise barred from lucrative and respectable occupations."2

From the beginning, the nursing school set high standards in its admissions policy preferring women who had graduated high school and who prior to final admission would be subject to a month-long probation which would later be increased to three months by 1896.3 In its first year, one hundred and seventy-five applicants applied with only ten accepted for admission and only seven officially enrolled. On October 27, 1892 the Provident Hospital Nurse Training School (School) held its first graduation for four of its inaugural students: Lillian E. Haywood, Florence Phillips, Bertha I. Estes, and Emma A. Reynolds. Reynolds would further distinguish herself becoming the first black woman to graduate from the Women's Medical College of Chicago in 1895 (now the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine).4 Despite the 1893 Depression and years of inadequate financing, the nursing school persevered and maintained high standards of excellence, furthering the training period for students to two years by 1896. School rules required day nurses to work a twelve hour shift with an hour for dinner and, where able, additional time allotted for rest or exercise. Student nurses kept tight schedules and would average attending to roughly fifty-five patients daily in addition to working in the hospital's dispensary. The School's curriculum was diverse with courses ranging from training in antiseptic preparation and nursing for surgery, to cooking, dietetics, and massage. Provident's student nurses even administered their own visiting nurse service between 1896-1898, after the Chicago Visiting Nurse Association had denied an alumna employment in 1894.5

A Providential New Century Dawns: 1900-1929
As the turn of the century approached it became evident that the original hospital building, having only twelve beds, was insufficient to maintain the medical needs of the communities it served. Administration of the hospital and training school now fell to George Cleveland Hall who also served as the new Chief of Staff after Dr. Williams' departure to Freedmen's Hospital in 1894. Hall praised the skill and acumen of Provident's nurses asserting "the graduates of this institution are in charge of other training schools for nurses and kindred institutions...throughout the country."6 On June 7, 1898, the hospital moved to a building on 36th and Dearborn equipped with modern facilities and a seventy-five bed capacity. Two years later, the nurses' quarters were also expanded to include a dormitory and assembly room as a result of a generous monetary donation. Further developing the program, in 1902 two major changes were implemented: the expansion of the nursing program to three years of instruction and the organization of an alumnae association with Dr. Isabella Garnett, an 1895 Provident alumna as its president.7 Garnett served as the marquee example of a nurse whose work treated both the physical pains and social constraints of the black community. She fulfilled Hall's declaration of faith in Provident's nurses' ability by working first as a school nurse and, like Emma Reynolds, becoming a doctor after matriculating from Chicago's College of Physicians and Surgeons (now UIC College of Medicine) in 1901.8 She recognized the same race prejudice that initiated the founding of Provident also existed for blacks living in Evanston and on the North Shore who were refused medical treatment at both Evanston and St. Francis Hospitals. In 1914, Dr. Garnett and her husband Dr. Arthur Butler opened the Evanston Sanitarium on the upper floors of their home at 1918 Asbury Avenue as a general practice and a nurse training school. A year later, Garnett mentored another Provident graduate nurse, Rhoygnette Webb who began working at the Sanitarium as its head nurse and by 1918, the Sanitarium was incorporated and overseen by a multiracial board of directors.9

Provident's graduate nurses continued to be at the forefront of positive social change regardless of the persistent racial antagonism that followed them. At the height of the 1918 flu epidemic, two of Provident's graduate nurses served at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois despite the American Red Cross and the Army Nurse Corps' reluctance to accept black nurses into service during WWI.10 In the summer of 1918, Jane Delano, Director for the Department of Nursing for the American Red Cross advised her Division Directors that while colored nurses would be authorized for enrollment in the Red Cross any direct applications by black nurses should be noted so "that in the enrollment here [in Washington, D.C.] may be no possibility of assigning them to duty without reference to their color." Black nurses were further branded by the requirement that black nurses' badges be marked with the letter "A" after their enrollment number to indicate that they were black. Even black nurses's applications were filed separately under "colored nurses." Two of Provident's graduate nurses signed up with the American Red Cross prior to being sent to Camp Grant. Willie Edna DePriest Cary and Virginia Richardson Steele Guy along with seven other black nurses who served at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois were the first of eighteen nurses to serve in the Army Nurse Corps between December 1918 and August 1919. Although they lived in segregated quarters, these nurses served both black and white soldiers. De Priest was the 20th African American nurse to enroll with the American Red Cross on August 3, 1918, her pin read 20-A, and Virginia Richardson Steele's pin read 72-A, she enrolled on October 11, 1918. In 1922, former Chief Nurse at Camp Grant, Anne Williamson commented in a report on the "contingent of colored nurses stationed at Camp Grant" and detailed that "these nurses . . . were serious minded, quiet, business like women, well qualified to take charge of wards, had our colored patients been segregated . . . they gave several dinners and dances, . . . [a]s the need for nurses at the Camp became less acute . . . by the middle of July, their services in this Camp had terminated."11 By the 1920s, Provident Hospital and Training School began to suffer the loss of white patronage and instead handled a nearly-exclusive black patient base due to Chicago's prominence as a destination for Southern blacks in the Great Migration. Often, these new patients were impoverished and unable to pay for medical services, but the hospital refused to turn them away, abiding by their oath to care for all. This commitment did not come without consequence. The ongoing lack of payment for rendered services impacted the hospital's operating budget and by extension, the nursing school, as was evidenced in Ethel Johns' 1925 study commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation. Despite these setbacks, Provident had maintained its reputation and in 1928 sought to bolster it by affiliating with the University of Chicago. The partnership would provide Provident with advanced medical services and the ability to improve the educational standards of its physicians and nurses while the university would have an available facility to send their black patients as well as their black medical students who needed to complete clinical internships. On October 24, 1929, the institutions signed a provisional affiliation agreement. Even during the Great Depression, Provident again proved itself to be formidable and accepted the task of raising $1.5 million to purchase and renovate the one hundred-bed Chicago Lying-In Hospital as its new site. Four decades after Emma A. Reynolds fought for her right to serve as a professional nurse, Provident Hospital and Training School stood stalwart and strove to be a beacon of light for African American women and for all. It indeed had cemented its legacy and had answered the question posed in 1914, "What is, after all the deepest significance of Provident Hospital--the actual work within its wards, the skilled employment which its scientific training places within the reach of colored women, or the influence it radiates, through the association of races in its work, upon one of the very grave problems of this country?"12

Header Image: Class of 1904 nurses from Provident Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. From the 14th Annual Report of Provident Hospital and Training School, 1904-1905. Chicago History Museum, ICHi-030235
Black Nurses During World War One Above: African American Red Cross nurses, c. 1917-1919, via Library of Congress.

After the Spanish-American War, the military excluded Black nurses from serving until the outbreak of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic after WWI. Many Black Americans served during the war, including as officers, infantry soldiers, medical officers, and clerks. But Black nurses were not accepted into service, even as the military and white nurse leaders created a school to train white nurses to fill wartime needs.1 The American Red Cross, which recruited nurses for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, refused to enroll Black nurses until 1918, when the desperation of the influenza epidemic collided with the activism of the NACGN and other prominent Black organizations, forcing the organization to make an exception to its policy.

Yet even once the Red Cross began enrolling Black nurses, they were not assigned to any military duties. Jane Delano, Director for the Department of Nursing for the Red Cross, mandated that Black nurses’ applications be filed separately under “colored nurses,” so that their race would be considered in giving them assignments. Black nurses were further branded by the requirement that their badges be marked with the letter “A” after their enrollment number to indicate that they were Black. The Red Cross’s policies combined with the Army and Navy’s racism meant that Black nurses were not given military assignments.

Historians Marian Moser Jones and Matilda Saines argue that white Americans saw military nurses as symbols of “wholesome womanhood in the masculine war zone,” but racial ideologies of the time held that only white women could personify “wholesome womanhood."2`Racism led the military to refuse to enlist Black nurses, even as increasing numbers of American soldiers died from the flu, in part due to lack of adequate care.

As influenza spread through military camps after the end of the war, many white doctors and nurses were still stationed abroad. Desperate and out of options, the military began to call up Black nurses. Between December 1918 and August 1919, eighteen Black nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps. They enrolled as officers but did not receive officer-grade pay.

Nine nurses were assigned to Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois, including two graduate nurses from Provident Hospital, Willie Edna DePriest Cary and Virginia Richardson Steele Guy. De Priest was the 20th African American nurse to enroll with the American Red Cross on August 3, 1918, her pin read 20-A. Steele's pin read 72-A; she enrolled on October 11, 1918. The nurses lived in segregated quarters, but they served both Black and white soldiers.

As the pandemic slowed, the nurses cared for wounded and disabled soldiers returning from hospitals overseas. The nurses were never promoted to supervisor, because white nurses were unwilling to allow them to manage integrated wards.

In 1922, Anne Williamson, former Chief Nurse at Camp Grant, commented in a report that the Black nurses:
“were serious minded, quiet, business-like women, well qualified to take charge of wards, had our colored [sic] patients been segregated...they gave several dinners and dances...[as] the need for nurses at the Camp became less acute...by the middle of July, their services in this Camp had terminated.”3

Because these Black nurses were not enlisted during wartime, they did not receive veterans’ benefits from the military and the Red Cross. Yet Black Americans were proud of these nurses’ service, and their work caring for Black and white soldiers would set an example that the NACGN would use in its fight to integrate military nursing during WWII.

Bibliography
Gwyneth Milbrath, "A New Approach to Preparing Nurses for War: The Army School of Nursing" OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 24, No. 3, Manuscript 4 (September 30, 2019), https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol24No03Man04.
Marian Moser Jones and Matilda Saines, “The Eighteen of 1918-1919: Black Nurses and the Great Flu Pandemic in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 6 (2019), 879. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305003.
Nursing in the Armed Forces Since its beginnings, the nursing profession has been tied to war. Formal nurse training programs first began in the United States after the terrible injuries and diseases of the Civil War. Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross after serving as a nurse in wars in the U.S. and Europe.^{^[1]} Yet for many decades the U.S. military and the American Red Cross refused to accept the service of Black nurses, except during times of great crisis and nursing shortages. The demands of wartime have often forced institutions to break with established social norms, including racism. Black communities and organizations, particularly the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) also played an important role in pushing the military and the Red Cross to change their policies. From the start of the modern nursing field until today, Black nurses have sought to provide nursing care in the military, finding unique opportunities and challenges in their service in the armed forces.

^{^[1]} About Clara Barton | Red Cross Founder | American Red Cross

Although they lived in segregated quarters, these nurses served both Black and white soldiers. De Priest was the 20th African American nurse to enroll with the American Red Cross on August 3, 1918, her pin read 20-A, and Virginia Richardson Steele's pin read 72-A, she enrolled on October 11, 1918. In 1922, former Chief Nurse at Camp Grant, Anne Williamson commented in a report on the "contingent of colored nurses stationed at Camp Grant" and detailed that "these nurses . . . were serious minded, quiet, business like women, well qualified to take charge of wards, had our colored patients been segregated . . . they gave several dinners and dances, . . . [a]s the need for nurses at the Camp became less acute . . . by the middle of July, their services in this Camp had terminated."tbd