Race, Gender, and Class in Philadelphia’s Negro Medical Renaissance, 1948–60

This paper examines the complexities of gender, race, and class in initiatives to desegregate the American hospital system from the perspective of Black nurses who worked and trained at Black-run Mercy-Douglass Hospital and School of Nursing, in Philadelphia, from 1948 to 1960. It argues nurses, mostly women, were largely valued to the extent that their labor created revenue for the hospital and supported medical interests as determined by physicians and those leading prominent medical institutions. Especially true for Black hospitals which were perennially underfunded, nurses and nursing schools were crucial to an institution’s capacity to provide sufficient health care and remain solvent.

This paper uses archival sources and interviews with fifteen Black nurses who worked or trained at Mercy-Douglass to understand how gender, race, and class tensions, alongside hospital imperatives, affected nurses’ incorporation. The nurses’ experiences help reveal the social dynamics in play after World War II, a period of significant debate about how to end racial segregation and discrimination in healthcare. Shortly after Mercy-Douglass was established in 1948 through the merging of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Mercy Hospital and Nurse Training School, the board of directors sought to transform the tattered, majority Black institution into a modern, interracial medical teaching center. But this rebirth did not include the nursing program. By examining this transition period from the perspective of nursing, we gain insight into how even when hospital leaders seek to be race, class, and gender inclusive they can fall short.

By showing how nurses petitioned for their interests and for community health needs, and yet were unable to achieve their goals, we see how their gender, class, and race statuses influenced medicine in ways misaligned with the mission of equitable medical delivery and respect for all medical professionals’ contributions.