Thursday, February 10, 2005
Listen To The Voices Of Civil Rights...
Today at lunch, I was lucky enough to catch a segment on Air America Radio discussing VoicesofCivilRights.org. The site's mission is the facilitate the sharing of personal accounts from the civil rights movement here in America.
As the site mentions, we all know Dr. King and Rosa Parks, but the roots of the civil rights movement stretch to countless people from all across this nation.
The story that struck me the most was that of Doxie Whitfield, a nurse originally from High Point, NC who worked in a newly-integrated hospital in Atlanta:
After graduating from nursing school in 1963, I worked in the hospital in my hometown of North Carolina. The hospital was segregated. I was fired because a white patient lied on me after they finally integrated. I then moved to Atlanta and started to work at Grady Hospital. I was working the day that hospital integrated.
I worked on the surgical ward. I admitted from surgery a white lady who had been moved from the "white" side to the "colored" side. The hospital had separate wards and separate emergency rooms. All supplies had a "W" for white and "C" for colored stamped on them. This included bed linen, hot water bottles, wheelchairs--everything. It was a major crime if the C items were seen on the W side.
The husband of the white woman I'd received from surgery said he did not want my "black hands" taking care of his wife. I continued to do my duty as a nurse, caring for his wife. He picked me up and literally threw me into the hall. I rolled down the hall. I was humiliated, embarrassed, and hurt. We had all white doctors working in the area. No one came to my rescue or even tried to investigate the situation. The man checked his wife out of the hospital because he did not want me or any other black person caring for her. The man carried his wife home, and she died shortly after leaving the hospital.
This is not the distant past...
People walking around our hometowns and even members of our own families lived through these events...
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