2024/01/01 by Francena F. L. Turner · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Race, History, and American Society #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
paper · doi:10.5325/nursinghistory.32.0142
openalex publication_date 2024/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
On August 17, 1956, seventeen Black women graduated from Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing (GSHSN). Once their commencement activities ended, the women submitted a petition, signed by each of them, to the board of directors of Good Samaritan Hospital (GSH). In the document, the graduates detailed that they had received “harsh and crude discipline” and that they were frustrated with “receiving an inferior education for exorbitant fees.”1 The all-White senior leadership summarily ignored the petition. Just two months later, the administration suspended twenty of the twenty-one junior nursing students still in the program for protesting their perceived poor treatment at the hands of their matron or director of nursing. Three years later, in 1959, the entire junior and senior classes held a general strike that led to GSHSN’s final closure and aided the desegregation of medical care and nursing education in Charlotte, North Carolina.What happened at GSHSN? Why did the students risk so much by openly protesting their treatment, living conditions, and education? Why did the school of nursing close when it did? How does this largely forgotten student strike fit into Charlotte’s desegregation arc? This article attempts to answer these questions while presenting three different yet connected protest actions taken by young Black women at a hospital-based school of nursing in the years prior to North Carolina’s more commonly acknowledged student activism of the 1960s and 1970s. The article begins with a chronological account of the student protests supported with secondary scholarship on nursing education history in Black hospital-based nursing schools, and closes with an exploration of the lasting results of the nursing student general strike at GSHSN.But for media attention garnered by an October 1956 protest, the action taken by the graduating class of 1956 might never have been made public. Sarah Hill, Brunelle Dawkins, Earcelle Richmond, Bettye Henderson, Ellen Wilson, Mary Tinsley, Florence Mizelle, Eunice Jones, Cherye McFadden, Clastine Carer, Jannie Hargrove, Doris Simms, Blondell Smith, Thelma Tyson, Mattye Burch, Elnora Bivings, and Julia Foster—the entire graduating class of 1956—expressed their concern and displeasure with their education at GSHSN by penning a postgraduation petition to the hospital’s board. This petition detailed their frustration with “harsh and crude discipline” they experienced while obtaining an “inferior education for exorbitant fees.”2 The hospital’s all-White senior leadership summarily ignored the petition and the strength it took students embarking on their careers to challenge their institution. Just months later, student nurses still at the school protested their treatment during the fall of 1956 to share similar complaints.A disciplinary committee of graduate nurses and hospital staff issued ten-day suspensions to twenty of the twenty-one members of the junior class after the nursing students held what the hospital’s administrator labeled a “riot” on Monday, October 22, 1956.3 The lone unsuspended student was not on campus during the protest. Hospital administrator Edward R. Frye told the press that the strike occurred after he punished a junior student nurse for “insubordination and defiance of an instructor in a classroom,” resulting in her being stripped of her white nursing uniform and being forced to wear a green smock instead. Later accounts showed that the nursing student asked to go home to see an ill relative. She then called the school to inform the faculty that she was now ill and could not return to campus in time for her scheduled work hours. A faculty member who was not the student’s personal physician demanded that she come in for an examination to prove her illness. The student returned to campus on Sunday, October 21, packed her clothing and belongings, and withdrew from the nursing school. Not only was this potential privacy breach relatively normal, but hospital-based nursing schools commonly used uniform demotion as punishment for student nurses. One student at another Black nursing school, Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing, said that she was so often stripped of her uniform that she forgot how the standard nursing uniform looked.4 At GSHSN, the remaining twenty students held a one-hour noise protest the next night. The suspended students returned to class and work on November 4.5The problems at GSHSN were not new. Months before the strike, the director of nursing, Mary Dye, had resigned due to “two years of disintegration of discipline.”6 Elma Moncrieffe then took her place. Frye, the hospital administrator, said that the school had experienced two years of “severe behavior problems” because he had instituted new rules and regulations for student behavior in response to unspecified complaints about student nurse behavior, community complaints about a decrease in academic performance, and “carelessness about dress.”7To be sure, all nursing schools at this time heavily policed students’ perceived morality and behavior. Black nursing schools—particularly those in hospitals—prided themselves on near militaristic control of their nursing students. According to historian Darlene Clark Hine, this control was due to the stereotypes inflicted on nurses and on Black women.8 Sometimes society labeled nurses in general, but often Black women—including Black nurses—were labeled as morally and sexually corrupt and thus needing stringent surveillance and control. Indeed, both White philanthropic organizations and state governments favored institutions that adhered to strict regimes of control and funded them accordingly.9 External evaluations of Black nursing schools focused on “order” more than on the status of the curriculum or the working conditions in the hospital.In 1954, a Charlotte-based community organization, the Negro Hospital Study Committee, released findings of a recent study. With regard to GSHSN, the nursing school graduates scored lowest on state examinations and the school ranked thirty-five out of the state’s thirty-six nursing schools.10 Moreover, nurses at GSH had the highest nurse-patient ratio of the four hospitals in Charlotte. The study also found a serious lack of qualified nursing educators in the nursing school. GSHSN had only one trained nurse educator with a Bachelor of Science in nursing, while the three White hospitals combined had thirty-three trained nurse educators with this advanced degree. The segregated nature of university-based nursing education and the relatively low pay offered by Black hospitals led to a dearth of adequately trained nursing educators for Black nursing schools.11 Importantly, the North Carolina state nurse standardization committee and the board of examiners did not require university training for nurse educators until the mid-1940s.12 Last, the study summarized the problems with the hospital’s environment with one sentence: “Good Samaritan suffers from a shortage of almost everything—operating rooms, equipment, and trained medical and nurse personnel.”13In response to the strike of 1956, Frye instituted changes. His new regulations, which focused on nursing student dress, prohibited students from wearing shorts or using hair coverings in public, and controlled the location and time that students could devote to studying. The administration forbade nursing students from studying in their bedrooms. Instead, all studying was to take place during nightly two-hour sessions held in the library. Nursing students could not get into cars with anyone other than their parents. These changes were in line with the previously discussed militaristic control of Black female nursing students and with other Black hospital-based nursing schools in the state. At the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in Durham, North Carolina, student nurses were also under heavy scrutiny, surveillance, and control. Rules were “rigidly enforced” and “focused mostly on the moral and ethical of the student history that students they were being by the much of the scholarship on Black and women education their treatment on and university the treatment of these students to that of Black and women in hospital-based nursing and educators at of education and the activities and education of Black and an of the student out how Black institutions were a of the found in Black women be and to an that the of their by rules and In the of the and one of the North Carolina of Negro an The to and for school and and female students at schools the of her and thus the of her rules for and young In the of one to rules for and clothing the of all the to and young in at GSHSN during the two years after the new rules took to the that the student as or as a their lack of into the rules that their GSHSN students openly students at other Black hospital-based schools of nursing each other the rules in a near of three of the GSHSN students in what the hospital administration to as a “riot” told a press that they protested actions of the One student students’ with those of from other Black hospital-based nursing schools who said that of the were to the of almost during the White hospital-based nursing schools of the on their student during the Charlotte’s Hospital School of Nursing students to activities with those offered to Frye the student strike as to the and the hospital’s board a to the nursing school The school to the garnered a of attention because of desegregation after the on of The was to the medical treatment for of Charlotte’s Black desegregation of institutions Black community members the funded and Hospital to Black Black nursing and Black medical and nursing staff of institutions in their October 1959, GSHSN senior nursing student for after she had been for other that the administrator her home because she due to the of with of the with hospital-based nursing training Darlene Clark an nursing students at students of to from the to their while working in the response to and what the students perceived as the of a of the junior nursing students Mary Doris Hill, Jones, and and senior nursing students and to classes or work on October The students a signed to the director of nursing the of was and and to return to classes and until they the administration their and to them, all the to their from the students held a and their protest. junior or senior nurse to class or work on October Instead, they with for Just a and as a who did not the strike, the nursing in their the students did not take in the strike to the and of the student protest. This was not a strike in which students to their This was a general strike to the hospital’s until it student state curriculum the school of nursing was a program in which the school in a this time the hospital faculty and nurses the new students for the for the nursing in this to the under close graduate student had for Once the and students were from the remaining students received more In their and students received and hours. With this in in the strike not have a that by junior and senior nursing the of students told the press that they had the The students never who this but and other community in the Black medical community were of the in desegregation in Charlotte. returned to after from of His time at only to as he aided the in desegregation protests at at to members of the Black community students to the of the the in with the Black and the in the of and other institutions while in these took in in in in to the of the of the to the and take on leadership was the of the Charlotte, was not in both the protest could in the Charlotte, more in White and perceived the as on because of lack of desegregation and the in of desegregation in the White and in a controlled and of desegregation in to the Black community to that the while to the status and the on the to which the community for a of of the Black being to White schools, or the community for used both and action to for of all His into not only with the White but with Black who in to protests to Charlotte’s schools and the state’s medical also to the four hospitals in the With the an of Charlotte’s Black and the hospitals and hospital-based nursing In the administrator and other of with to Black for a that was to the of a nursing In this administrator R. to the Hospital School of The nursing in but the to Black nursing students. and desegregation With these in the nursing students’ strike at GSH in after the strike a of the on released a a the committee had with the hospital leadership in GSH was the only hospital to potential the committee found that Charlotte’s Black community had place to The that the hospital’s leadership to to community or on hospital This was as the hospital that all of Charlotte’s Black and trained a of the Black nursing staff had an administration made of White and women who from Black The hospital was location and status as a hospital by the North Carolina of the it for the from the student strike and the students used to their the that the students were protesting conditions which could to and poor nurses. a strike The attention to of and and on state the the their and status were were and under The also the lack of Black those in the and the nature in treatment of Black and White Black for a line to get their while staff White at their the called for a Black administrator to work Edward R. The with a to close both the school of nursing and the nursing student due to lack of and poor administration of GSH largely ignored the when they received it in 1959, but had to with findings during the nursing student strike in The was of a to the desegregation of The student strike was in a of the junior and senior nursing students to work or class both an and shortage at were protest actions the students could have only a general strike attention to at the not be to the desegregation of and the nursing GSH have to close a segregated to the training of Black nursing students and and the of graduate and the to their in being to the nursing school. According to he and often on because the only Black that a because he was a more and had only Black and that them from on the White for their to was in the student strike from the or Black organizations the to the students the what that the the and into with each in the the protesting students did not see their as a general strike to the closure of their school and of the have in the actions they took as to the they at told the that the strike was the of about in the rules the young women the on Black student protests on that and community members student as The of in with by the state board of nurse examiners and for a for the school as a of during the and administrator Frye students to two studying in the library. that students could not the the nursing schools experienced a to class time and decrease work as state that hospital-based schools staff to students to on their had the to which nurses had received nursing education in hospital-based nursing Charlotte’s for received that their nurses were in but and of nursing and medical These led to and more class time and for student nurses. and students at GSHSN had that the hospital student to the of their The lack of also low due to a lack of study nurse and that the state board leadership that activities were for a The for student nurses them with two to four of the students could not campus at they in their Frye and of Nursing Moncrieffe the nursing students because nurses could not strike their to both the hospital and the nursing school that these students were not yet nurses. The was to the student In an on the of the strike, the the strike while the of the student care had to come before student The called for an in the or of the nursing staff the on student Black female nursing students to the care of the Black community of their was not to detailed how nursing students at the hospital-based nursing school controlled by for had to to in this school until the and during that time to the rules of the school and the hospital and to be to the the junior and senior nursing students of GSHSN to their campus and Frye the and asked that they a held on October 1959, the board for how Frye the student strike and that the hospital’s were the of the of the the board at and could have used the of and hospital to their The the hospital have also the hospital as the the on staff at an of the and The board to close the school and place students at other The of the North Carolina of Nursing scheduled a campus on October to the to to get them to the schools their Frye to that the hospital did not on the of nursing students to the student nurses in their training graduate nurses in hospital The graduate he the nursing care for the hospital’s and to work to the from the student On October of the graduate nurses and their of The nurses their signed to the hospital to the and to the North Carolina of the The of that the hospital did not on student to the that the hospital was not adequately with graduate nurses and that nurses being used for more than work at the The graduate nurses their by that the school of nursing and the hospital be or that Frye and Moncrieffe be by with more and a more of and one of the state’s Black nurses graduated from Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing and at GSH and This made her an to each of the student protests did not the protests or the nursing school closure in history her conditions at GSH time and to Hospital and Lincoln Hospital School of She the Black Black for themselves while also to the care for their at while in school, her a more with which to see the two asked about those a of that GSH nurses had to out while nursing She at was a of a of the that had in school, and it was due to the time that that the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing also had of the that GSH the nursing staff to and She nurses to take to for the in the and a lack of often of the while and than in she was not the at as it had an staff and to out those to the a for the time by segregated in place to the the to and of community care in nursing at the “Good Samaritan was and but she the nursing students’ strike was not the only at The hospital’s medical while themselves from the student protest, on the medical of the of the student nurses was a of for The medical staff that Frye lack of concern and of problems at the A staff member that the nursing and another said that physician to students until were One physician said that were not the medical staff to state for an now the of with the hospital board on October 1959, and that made and made to action have that all be at the was not and by Sunday, October the students had their campus On October 21, the students to the nursing school with the of equipment, and The two were that the school and not the of the and The board was the remaining the two were the school of closure on the students. school not have been had the twenty-one nurses not on their recent scholarship on Black in line with their treatment, that the of or with and A recent study of found that all Black of by Black being heavily punished for behavior and being as of or from In Black have of as care of while still with GSHSN and other hospital-based nursing schools, being for care while under twenty-one years of the to them, and them as This of how Black and women experienced education how the nursing students at GSHSN as of them have been under the of as it was to students when hospitals more of a student’s hospital leadership policed the nursing students as while them to The students received punishment and The board of and the hospital that the nursing students had to be punished by their held a with the students on October and them of the school closure and only four of the students in other The next administration the and he a the hospital for not for the entire student before the One of the junior nursing for an on of the junior and senior classes to the administration and hospital leadership from the school. The school for on November The nursing school were to be the to at a hospital-based nursing school they had 1959, the student that she her time her the and her that her not as as they She still to be a nurse and a from a nursing school in her she was previously to the as her said that she had her in leadership not only the nursing school but asked to control of the hospital while also for an of The of the nursing student strike at GSHSN from after the but in the a that with the students who took in the and to in her of North She still to a nursing school. Hospital School of Nursing to the women from GSHSN who submitted Black community the were the hospital administrator the of a nursing school at to the by GSHSN’s closure the that the administration of did not desegregation of of Hospital in four or nursing and Hospital in North Carolina four or students. these students could not their from GSHSN and had to as students. The nursing students’ that schools found the junior and senior students in nursing but in nursing that at what of the students or of them their nursing and on to and desegregation in media and the student strike held in October as was the final which led not only to the of the nursing school but the of GSH and Three to these of the of student petition by the class of 1956, the student “riot” during the fall of 1956, or the student strike held in the time that the hospital the nursing school. as the board of GSH a and discussed of it be to the school of because of hospital-based nursing schools were in because of the of more university-based nursing schools and the desegregation of of the state’s Black hospital-based nursing schools and two Black offered nursing and North Carolina Last, the of the two hospitals was in the when the students held their In 1959, an to the Hospital to be used to GSH prior to with and other in the Black community the as they it to by at the Black medical community the Black community that GSH was the only and to as as the GSH to the to the of to segregated 1959, the the in place because of this from the to the from GSH and in the the student strike that the strike the desegregation of and nursing school. the strike have the of Black at of the students’ the graduate nursing staff found to their about the years of student and a of their the student strike, the medical staff could only to of or the Black community to for and the White have to problems at GSH it had and had a to and to medical for the Black The nursing students had to the not because they had the to but because they could the to the status The nursing students to the of care and and to to to and the press the closure of GSHSN as being both a training and to the A of that Black nursing students at Hospital School of Nursing The hospital desegregation of nursing school by Black women into program while them from the The in the Black only after the desegregation of all training at and White students at The two of women took classes at the this on the of segregated of North Carolina the hospital and the to the on On October took for the administration of GSH and it Hospital to the from history and segregated and to White and medical under and to to Black but not to Black nursing students. The of in to hospital regard to in the state. could these to or segregated or of hospitals or new segregated hospital North Carolina led the in of these the hospital these to a of by students and community members at the a of that found still in in of the hospital with this Hospital and Hospital much later, for the a of nursing school and that Black student until Black women graduated from the and only Black faculty members in the of the graduates were those who it that nursing students not be in the it because of the class and the nature of these nursing of Hospital had Black nurses or nursing Hospital in years regard to In the Nursing In the of the used to be the Black hospital in the now the line of Charlotte’s of A due to the of of the of GSH and the years that of nurses and medical to for the Black community under the of in and scholarship focused on desegregation in with on the often who were the of accounts of the Black women made medical care and nurse training for Charlotte’s Black article was supported by the of the on and The program made by from the