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I entered the Georgia Baptist School of Nursing in September after graduating High School in June, 1959. I had been a Christian since age 11 following VBS. I started attending SS and church when I was in first grade as the school bus driver invited everyone who did not have a church to come to his church on Sunday. He drove his school bus route on Sunday mornings to pick us up until he retired at the end of my fifth grade. Then members of the church gave us rides to church when Mom did not go or there was no car available. I became active in all the children's programs and then all youth programs at the church. GA's (Girl's Auxiliary) where I learned many scriptures and about missions. Sunday School and evening Church Training for learning to study, do study courses, and be able to speak before a group.
I did not have plans for college. Being the oldest of five and with no money for college, I planned for and had a job soon after high school graduation. But the counselor at school met me in the hall 3-4 weeks before graduation and asked if I had ever thought about being a nurse. The answer, of course, was no since I had no money for Nursing School. She told me about a scholarship by the District Nurses Association to Nursing School which had not been awarded and suggested that I could apply. She told me I needed to make application to some Nursing Schools immediately because of the late date for applications. I applied to three Schools of Nursing before the end of the week. Two Schools notified me that their application process was closed for the year. I received notice from Georgia Baptist School of Nursing that my application was being considered but I lacked one more science credit from HS. I had taken Biology and Algebra 1 & 2. But I then took typing, shorthand and Business Math to prepare for a job in business. The counselor and principal decided I could earn credit with a general science course so I took a home study course and was issued credit and a letter to the Nursing School.
God had a plan. I was admitted to the next class. Can you guess what it was like to take two college chemistry courses without having any Chemistry or Physics in high school?
This scholarship and the admission to GBSON was greatly celebrated by myself, my family, and my church. The church bought me a nursing watch as a celebration gift. I was the first person on either side of my family to ever attend college.
I walked into a wonderful Christian School of Nursing and Baptist Student Union. We had Vespers on Monday evenings with inspirational speakers and fellowship. We had a wonderful Director of Student Activities, which included the BSU. The Atlanta FBC provided a bus to pick up students at the three Atlanta Nursing Schools with the largest number of students being at GBSON. We were taken for coffee and donuts with other students (a great number being the GA Tech BSU students.) I met my husband-to-be in mid November of my freshman year (a blind date arranged by a nursing student's new boy friend at GA Tech for a football game).
During my senior year I was president of the School's Baptist Student Union. I was also the Historian for the State BSU.
When I completed Nursing School in 1962 and in my early years as a graduate nurse most social institutions were maintained separately for blacks and whites. Hospitals, schools, restaurants, churches and most places of business were not integrated. With the Civil Rights Act 1964 this began to change.
I worked in a doctor's office from 1963 to1966 and then we went to Wales for 18 months. I did not return to work in the hospital until January 1968. During that time period major changes had taken place in the patient population in hospitals.
We had African American doctors and their patients were being admitted to the hospital where I worked. There were also African American employees.
I and most all Americans were aware of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's work and messages. The following description, mostly a summary of information from Wikipedia, is consistent with what we experienced.
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.
King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
King and the SCLC applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.
When I was pregnant with our first son Jeff, I worked the afternoon/evening shift at the hospital. I worked PRN, which meant I was given my assignment on arrival and worked wherever needed. On one of these days I received patient assignments on a surgical unit and realized one of my patients was Mrs. Coretta Scott King. When I entered the room, Dr. King was sitting in a chair near the door with his legs crossed, reading the newspaper. I can still visualize him laying his paper across his lap and greeting me as I went to her bedside. He seemed to watch and wait for me to finish my time at her bedside. This was late February or early March and I was wearing maternity clothes, being about six months pregnant. As I was leaving the room, we greeted one another again and he asked something like, "When is the baby due, and is this your first one?" He said "Congratulations!" and wished me well.
On April 4th I was driving to work when I heard on the radio news that Dr. King had been shot and killed in Memphis. This terrible news was even more shocking and painful since I had so recently seen him alive and well. It was very painful and my thoughts went immediately to those I would see when I arrived at work. We busied ourselves with the work we had do, but needless to say it was a very somber evening. Several of the employees were allowed to go home because they were so upset and affected by the news.
Several years later, I met the nurse who had been the baby sitter for the Kings. She was a nurse at Grady at that time. She told me about going to stay with the children that afternoon and night after Dr. King was shot.
I am not sure if there were any African American Head Nurses at that time because soon afterwards I was assigned to work a unit for the remainder of my pregnant working time with (I think) the first African American Unit Supervisor RN. We became friends and ate together in the cafeteria. As an African American she was part of a very small minority in the work force and felt more comfortable not having to eat alone. She and the employees on the unit gave me a small baby shower on my last day to work on the unit. (FYI: our first son Jeff was born the next evening, three weeks earlier than expected and we did not have a crib yet.)
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