CENTER FOR "RACE," CULTURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE COLLOQUIA SERIES
A Conversation with Katrina Sims, PhD, Assistant Professor of History and Faculty-in-Residence, Hofstra University
“’The Cotton Field was Not the Place for Her’:
The Gender and Class Dynamics of the Black Health Movement in the Mississippi Delta During the Mid-Twentieth Century
The Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou, MS, introduced one of the state’s first practical nurse training programs in 1941, offering Black women economic opportunities beyond the fields of the Mississippi Delta. Black women who joined the staff introduced a health politic that included access to medical and nonmedical care that was individualized, dignified, modern, and uplifting. However, by 1949, the professionalization movement threatened to essentially shut out Black workingclass women who did not redirect scant family resources to enroll in state sanctioned nursing programs. This presentation rescues Black working-class women nurses from invisibility and places them at the center of the modern Black Health Movement.
Dr. Sims’ research and teaching interests include Black studies, women’s and gender studies, Southern studies, and the history of health care in the United States. Register in advance.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2023, 1:00-2:25 P.M.