The SSJs' convent, hospital, and school were located in the black neighborhood, and the nurses encountered many patients whose lives were affected by poverty and racism. One was 18 years old with tuberculosis of the spine. She weighed only 70 lb and was in a heavy body cast. A sister noted, "She is poor. Her mother couldn't care for her. Who would care for an advanced TB for nothing?"Another patient required a reduction of a dislocated arm and planned to work in the summer to pay the hospital bill. The sister wrote, "The parents are separated, therefore the burden of support rests on the mother," but for African American women, "it is next to impossible to earn more than a bare living in the South." At the same time, Good Samaritan Hospital frequently received patients with injuries suffered from beatings by the Ku Klux Klan.
As more patients came to the hospital, the nursing shortage grew worse. To obtain trained nurses, Sister Louis Bertrand established Alabama's first School of Practical Nursing. Although it was open to everyone regardless of race, color, or creed, the students were primarily African American. In establishing a practical school of nursing instead of a program for registered nurses, the sisters followed the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, founder of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in 1881. Washington encouraged blacks to focus on the practical issues of life, on things that needed to be done immediately. Although criticized then and since for sacrificing a broad education, he nevertheless argued that African Americans should first establish an economic base for advancement. To him, social upliftment strategies were keys to obtaining racial equality. Thus, the sisters' school brochure stated as an objective: "To prepare professional women, equipped physically, intellectually and spiritually, to provide self-satisfaction and community welfare." One news release proudly noted that wages of the 35 graduates currently employed at Good Samaritan Hospital totaled more than $80 000, which boosted Selma's economy.
Most of the students were non-Catholic. True to their Catholic tradition, the sisters dutifully reported an average of 4 or 5 converts a year. The religious mission of the hospital was also reflected in the School of Nursing brochure. It advertised that well-qualified applicants, "under the guidance of Religion and Catholic Philosophy," would "develop a Christ-like spirit toward the sick." Applicants had to have completed at least 8 years of grammar school with preference given to those who had completed high school. Twenty to 40 students composed the classes annually. There were no living facilities for students, so those who were not from Selma boarded with local African American families. They had their classes in the nursing home lounge and St Elizabeth's Parish Hall until a newly remodeled classroom space opened on the second floor of the 2-story brick hospital.
The sisters taught the classes, whereas physicians provided some guest lectures. Students received 1 year of theory and practice in medical, surgical, pediatric, and geriatric nursing. Sister Mary Christopher Kuchman broke the color barrier when she took the students to a white hospital in Montgomery, so they could have obstetric clinical experience. In so doing, she was able to get the school accredited with the state. Other courses included anatomy and physiology, bacteriology, sociology, religion, and ethics. By 1966, the Good Samaritan School of Practical Nursing had graduated more than 300 students, 8 of whom were men. Graduates readily secured employment in hospitals throughout the South. Many of these nurses went on to get advanced degrees, whereas others stayed to work at Good Samaritan.
Etta Perkins, one of the early graduates, eventually became a registered nurse and taught in the sisters' nursing program. In June 1981, at the 35th Annual Convention of the Licensed Practical Nurses Association of Alabama, she recalled that in the 1940s, "there was no place for a Black girl in our area to go for training." When Sister Louis Bertrand set up Good Samaritan's school, it "opened the doors for us all." The keynote speaker at that convention was Rev William R. Wrench, an African American registered nurse anesthetist who was Director of Anesthesia at Good Samaritan Hospital at that time. Several Good Samaritan alumni received awards. Thus, the nuns' strategies paid off for many of their students who were able to contribute to the development of a black professional class, while also demonstrating that they could care for themselves.
During the 3 decades following its establishment as a Catholic hospital, white physicians provided the healthcare, led by a medical missionary, Dr Isabel M. Dumont from Germany, and her friend, Joan Mulder, a laboratory and x-ray technician. This was not a hospital where African American physicians predominated, and few black doctors came to Selma to stay. In 1944, 15 doctors, all white and Protestant, comprised the staff. In 1949, 7 lay registered nurses, including 1 man and 3 graduates from the sisters' hospital in Elmira, New York, worked in the hospital. In a newsletter to potential donors, 1 priest noted that 698 baptisms had occurred in Selma. Revealing the importance of the hospital in this mission activity, 210 of the baptisms were administered in the hospital on dying infants and death-bed conversions.
By 1958, 22 full- or part-time physicians (Protestant) were employed, only 2 of whom were African American. The women's congregation kept statistics not only of numbers but also of race and religion of its workers. With the exception of physicians, the majority of the personnel were African American and Protestant who worked under the sisters' supervision. The nuns, too, recorded their successes in baptisms: in 1959, 41 infants, 15 children, 8 adults, and 10 stillborn infants had been baptized.
By 1964, Good Samaritan Hospital had become one of the largest employers in Selma. It had 110 full-time and 10 part-time workers. During the 12-month period ending June 30, 1964, its employees earned over $183 000.00, $38 000 more than the preceding 12 months. In addition, the hospital spent thousands of dollars for supplies and services from Selma's businesses. This prompted an announcement that Good Samaritan Hospital is "good business for Selma!" That same year, 2189 patients were admitted, 256 infants were born, and 1479 emergency treatments were performed.
As early as 1950, the priests' and sisters' work with African Americans was gaining local attention. One letter to a superior noted that "last February our plant was one of a group that [was] marked with KKK [Ku Klux Klan] stickers." Prominent African Americans received similar notices, implying that they should get out of town. Koehlinger argues that "sisters in Selma often did things in their work that were considered scandalous within the ethos of Jim Crow."(p151) They visited the homes of African Americans, taught their children, and cared for their sick in homes, the hospital, and nursing home. The nuns did not volunteer to come but were sent by their superiors, and Selma was a frightening place to be.
Several SSJs reflected on their various experiences as the tensions built in Selma in the early 1960s. Because they worked with African Americans, many of Selma's white population considered the SSJs "black" by association. They were often designated as the "black sisters" to distinguish them from the Sisters of Mercy, the "white sisters" who worked with Selma's white population. This, despite the fact that the Sisters of Mercy wore black habits and the SSJs wore white ones. The SSJs interpreted their identification with African Americans as evidence of success in their mission. But in the minds of white Selmians, the sisters' association with blacks worked against their whiteness, and the nuns often were subjected to derision. Sister Josepha Twomey, a teacher, recalled the fear she felt when crossing a street as a car came up behind her. She walked faster, and as the white driver gunned the engines and sped past, he shouted, "Nigger [sic] lover!" She was trembling as she reached the other side of the street. Sister Mary Paul Geck, superior of the sisters in Selma, recalled that the sisters had 3 strikes against them: they were white, Catholic, and they worked with blacks.
Koehlinger effectively argues that the SSJs learned to manipulate the ambiguity of their racial position, sometimes passing as "black" when they thought it would help African Americans, and other times strategically maintaining their whiteness, such as when acting as professional nurses and teachers. The designation as "black sister," however, did not mean that tension was totally absent at Good Samaritan Hospital. In June 1960, for instance, hospital employees requested a meeting with Sister Louis Bertrand to ask for a raise and cab fare for those on the evening shift. Significantly, they requested to be addressed by the title of "Mr, Mrs, or Miss."
Still, as Koehlinger asserts, the sisters' racial ambiguity confounded the binary classification of black and white and challenged neat categorizations of segregation. This could be seen in the sisters' participation in the voting rights movement in Selma. African Americans made up almost half of Selma's population, but only 2% were registered voters. As the sisters observed the discrimination to which blacks were subjected, they began advocating for voting rights in subtle ways. For example, they boycotted Selma's grocery stores that catered only to whites; they bought groceries in Montgomery, 50 miles away; and they stood in "Colored Only" lines to show their support for blacks. On one occasion, when Sisters Josepha, Barbara Lum, and Loretta Poole stopped at a local ice cream parlor and witnessed African Americans, with money in hand, being refused service, they left, even though it meant not getting served.
Since the late 1950s, individual leaders and the Dallas County Voters League had attempted to register black citizens, but the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan had succeeded in keeping blacks from registering and voting through discrimination and intimidation tactics. Then in 1963, in cooperation with the Dallas County Voters League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a principle organization of the civil rights movement, began organizing meetings and voter registrations in Selma and surrounding counties. It was at this time that the sisters increasingly grew sorrowful and angry over the cruelty they witnessed. Sister Barbara Lum had joined the hospital nursing staff in 1959 after working at the sisters' hospital in Elmira, New York. In the 1960s, she also taught in the practical nursing program. She wrote her parents in May 1963 that several of the Good Samaritan nurses attended a meeting on voting registration in the Baptist Church next door to the convent. Sister Barbara was very distressed by the nurses' reports that Sheriff Jim Clark came to the meeting and stood in the back of the church. Often, whites from several counties around Selma formed "posses" under Clark and followed African Americans to and from their meetings.
The sisters were horrified over the harassment of the African American nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital, particularly after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963. Four young girls attending Sunday school were killed in that incident. The violence set off sympathy sit-ins, picketing, and parading in the street of Selma. In response, the sheriff's deputies and highway patrolmen, wearing their steel helmets, were very much in evidence, often arresting up to 90 people a day, even though most of the violence was caused by whites. In the meantime, the Good Samaritan School of Practical Nursing had enrolled 40 students. On one occasion, Sister Barbara took the class on an annual field trip to the health department, an event that attracted the media and the police. Afterward, police cars followed some of the students home, mistaking them for voting protestors. That same month, Etta Perkins stood in line at the courthouse every day for 2 weeks to register to vote. Another registered nurse at Good Samaritan was arrested for stopping to talk to a protester.
By 1964, the racial situation had intensified. In July, 70 people, mostly teenagers, were arrested in the middle of the month. The sisters' stories emphasized their identification with the plights of their black neighbors. One day, the nuns tried to visit a group of black students who had been arrested. On that occasion, their white skins brought them no privileges. Rather, they experienced firsthand the hatred in the guards' eyes as they pointed guns at them. The sisters had brought food for the young men, and a sister nurse wanted to make sure they were all right, but the guards refused them admittance. On another occasion, one of their eighth-grade students had been arrested, and she was detained several days for refusing to call an African American woman by her first name; rather, she used "Mrs."
Then on February 18, 1965, a trooper shot a young, unarmed civil rights protestor, Jimmie Lee Jackson, as he shielded his mother in a cafe where they had fled after being attacked by troopers during a night march for voter registration in nearby Marion. He was taken to Good Samaritan where he died a week later. To her regret, Sister St Joseph Creighton, a nurse anesthetist at the hospital, had not been present during the operation, and a dentist had to give the anesthetic. Sister Barbara cared for Jackson and, with tears welling in her eyes, she recalled him saying, "Don't you think this is a high price for freedom?"
The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the demonstrators' hopes of bringing attention to their civil rights violations led to a planned march on March 7, 1965, which came to be labeled "Bloody Sunday." After Mayor Joe Smitherman, a supporter of segregation, and others attempted to stop the march, violence occurred when state and local police attacked 600 civil rights marchers who were crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route from Selma to the capital in Montgomery. Not only the march made national headlines, but also Good Samaritan Hospital, where the sisters cared for wounded marchers.
The local bishop of the diocese had forbidden the sisters from marching and threatened to send anyone back to their home state if she did so. He saw the demonstrations, and particularly Dr Martin Luther King, as divisive. Thus, on the morning of March 7, the sisters were either at the hospital working their usual shifts or in St Elizabeth's convent. Sister Barbara had gone to the hospital earlier that morning. One of the hospital administrative staff and some of the local march planners asked her to prepare a first-aid kit. She recalled her naivete in fixing up a small kit with Band-Aids, skin creams, and the like. No one expected that any violence would occur, even though the sister nurses had cared for patients who were injured by whites in the past.
A news bulletin interrupted the regular radio broadcast to report the violence. Led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, the marchers had headed east out of Selma on US Route 80 but had gotten only 6 blocks away to the bridge where they were met by the troopers. Television cameras captured Sheriff Jim Clark's lawmen teargassing, clubbing, spitting on, whipping, and jeering at the demonstrators, while others trampled on the marchers with horses as they drove them back into town.
Soon after the sisters heard the news broadcast, they received a phone call from Sister Michael Ann Hanly to send all the nurses immediately to the hospital. Sister Michael Ann was the administrator of Good Samaritan who had succeeded Sister Louis Bertrand the previous year. In a few minutes, another call came for all the sisters to hurry over. The hospital had an emergency department with 3 beds and was staffed by 150 employees, 90% of whom were black. Sisters Mary Paul and Mary Weaver, who were elementary school teachers, sat at the admissions desk and processed incoming patients. They sent people overcome with tear gas to the dining room and the more seriously injured to the actual emergency department, where sister nurses St Joseph Creighton and Barbara Lum cared for the patients, including John Lewis. Sister Barbara recalled that people "were just in shock that the march had turned so violent. I think we all were." Sister Liguori Dunlea, another nurse, led those who were discharged to the extended care facility in the hospital and contacted relatives and friends to come for them. Sisters Margaret Isabelle Tracy and Mary Christopher Kuchman cared for others in the hospital's dining room that had been set up as a second emergency department. Sister Josepha, the teacher, worked in the central supply room. She also aided Sisters Mary Weaver and Bernice Quinn in transporting people to x-ray and in giving spiritual and emotional support to the patients and their relatives.
Men, women, boys, and girls came pouring into the hospital. Both white and black physicians came to help as well as other off-duty nurses and personnel, including nurse Etta Perkins and Assistant Administrator John Crear. Injuries included severe head lacerations, cuts and bruises, and fractures caused by horses trampling on extremities. All the injured suffered from tear gas that had soaked their clothing; and before long, in the enclosed rooms of the hospital, the nurses and other workers felt the effects as well. "I can still smell that smell," recalled Sister Barbara. "Everybody suffered from it. It's very pungent. Your eyes stream and your nose runs. It's just so strong." Patients continued to come throughout the afternoon, and the workers tended more than a hundred people. They admitted 15 with head injuries and fractures.
The televised images sickened and outraged people throughout the country. Following a call by Dr Martin Luther King, political and religious leaders and other sympathizers, including Catholic sisters, congregated in Selma with King to show their solidarity with the marchers. Although the SSJs could not march, they offered their hospital and convent as meeting and resting places for demonstrators from all across the country. In addition to 145 lay men and women, the roster for visitors at Good Samaritan Hospital contained the names of 5 monsignori, 135 priests, 30 Protestant ministers, 4 rabbis, and 2 members of the US Air Force from 26 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, and Germany. The hospital dietician, Ms Patricia Robinson, served the meals. When no beds were available, they set up mattresses on the floor in the old building. Dr King visited the hospital, as well, and other demonstrators stayed in the homes of the African American citizens of Selma. Father Maurice Ouellet opened the parish house to civil rights workers as their base, an act that later would contribute to his expulsion from the diocese by his bishop. This event showed that divisions occurred not only between whites and blacks but also among members of the Catholic Church, many of whom believed that politics and religion should be separated. Still, Sister Barbara remembered, "It felt wonderful to have them coming.... I felt very proud to be a sister." In one of the marches, the protestors stopped in front of Good Samaritan Hospital and sang, "We Shall Overcome."
At this time, the sisters were still a part of a traditional church defined by male dominance; thus, although priests could attend civil rights meetings, the sisters were forbidden by the bishop from doing so. Not wanting to directly challenge their superior, they complied with his directives. Still, they found creative ways to stretch the boundaries of church discipline. For example, when a noted civil rights figure, James Baldwin, spoke at the Baptist temple next door to the convert, they took turns standing on a radiator in an attempt to hear the faint sounds of the speaker. By engaging in this covert act of passive resistance, the sisters were able to find a measure of independent spirit without having to wear the prickly cloaks of "spiritual revolutionaries."
Not all whites in Selma were hostile to African Americans' struggles. Some housed marchers coming from other parts of the country, and a few law enforcement officers fought Sheriff Clark's intimidating actions. Eventually, Dr King successfully led marchers to Montgomery. Afterward, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) became preoccupied with internal politics and paid less attention to events in Selma. But a significant victory came when Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965.
The next several years saw a flurry of activity as the sisters continued their work with African Americans in Selma. This occurred within the nation's political context of establishing a national health insurance plan. Two decades of debate had ensued in Congress, with opponents warning of the dangers of socialized medicine. But on July 30, 1965, President Johnson signed Medicare and its companion program Medicaid into law as part of his "Great Society." Catholic hospitals had historically resisted any external control by the government, but, on June 9, 1966, Sister Michael Ann announced that Good Samaritan Hospital had been certified and approved as a provider of hospital services to Medicare patients. The sisters wasted no time in readying the hospital to meet the required standards, and they helped each of their senior citizens fill out their applications for the new program. By then, the hospital had undergone its latest expansion that included a maternity ward, a pediatrics unit, a 41-bed medical-surgical area on the third floor, 3 new operating rooms, a recovery room, and air conditioning. In the 1960s, new interventions were developing for cardiac arrhythmias, and Good Samaritan kept up to date by ordering special equipment for use in cardiac emergencies. Sisters supervised in-service training sessions for nurses, while other nurses attended coronary care institutes and emergency department seminars.
A turning point for the hospital came in the early 1970s, however. The passage of Medicare and Medicaid bills in 1965 meant that any hospital that received federal funds had to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited any discrimination in hospitals and other public places. While Medicare and Medicaid payments helped Good Samaritan's finances at first, a gradual exodus of white doctors and their black patients to newer facilities in the area occurred. Desegregation, then, was the primary factor that proved fatal to Good Samaritan, and the same was occurring in other historically black hospitals.
In 1970, citing rising costs and scarcity of qualified personnel as faculty members, the Governing Board of Good Samaritan Hospital announced that the School of Practical Nursing would close. In addition, vocational and trade schools in Selma and surrounding community colleges were providing similar services. Then in December 1971, the General Council of the Sisters of St Joseph in Rochester met with regional coordinators and nursing sisters to discuss worsening conditions at Good Samaritan. This included diminishing physician support. According to the sisters, when a new medical center in conjunction with the physician-owned Baptist Hospital opened in Selma the previous year, the physicians began giving priority to patients there. The availability of specialized services such as cardiac care units was the reason for referring their patients. Good Samaritan leaders tried to recruit African American physicians and doctors from a nearby air force base, with no responses. Consequently, finances were precarious. And registered nurses were leaving with no replacements, despite nationwide recruitment efforts. On December 21, 1971, council members finalized the decision to withdraw the SSJs from Good Samaritan Hospital and Nursing Home.
Other drastic changes were occurring in women's religious congregations. By the early 1970s, vocations were rapidly declining. Consequently, secular influences grew in hospitals through the appointment of lay administrators, nursing supervisors, and trustees. At the same time, a feminist consciousness was emerging among some Catholic sisters, although, as Koehlinger argues, it was different from second-wave feminism that was shaping the secular society. First, although sisters objected to male clerics' interference with their lives, they had long participated in solidarity with other women through their convents. Many read books on Catholic feminism by Rosemary Radford Ruether, not Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, although some read both. In addition, they drew their views from Catholic theological issues of the post-Vatican II Church that emphasized the dignity of each human being. Finally, Catholic sisters participated not in consciousness-raising groups but in chapter meetings mandated by Vatican II.
Council minutes of the Rochester SSJs congregating leadership provide insight into another phenomenon among congregations, as a result of Vatican II. Rather than the congregation's leadership appointing sisters to their work sites, individual nuns could confer with the administration about them. The December 21, 1971, minutes noted that "the old-time 'slot filling' assignment still seem[ed] to be a concept in the minds of some Sisters in spite of the opportunities given year after year for the individual to make recommendations concerning her personal assignment."One sister pointed out that sisters should keep the church's apostolate in mind, including a growing emphasis on care of the elderly. Other sisters stated that when they entered, they committed themselves to their congregation's work, regardless of where they went. Besides, seeking outside jobs would take away possibilities for lay nurses who needed to make a livelihood. Thus, it seems that changes in vatican II were a factor in the congregation's ability to continue to staff Good Samaritan.
The SSJs pulled out of Good Samaritan in 1972. African American leaders became more involved, with John Crear becoming administrator and Dr Charles Lett the medical chief of staff. The hospital rebounded strongly for a while, securing a grant for research on rural health in Dallas and surrounding counties. This led to the Rural Health Medical Program housed at the hospital. Some of the SSJs stayed to manage rural health clinics and learning centers at Pine Apple Mission and Vredenburgh Health Center, where one of the licensed practical nurses who trained at the Good Samaritan School of Practical Nursing did the laboratory work and electrocardiograms and maintained the pharmacy. By 1981, however, the hospital provided a million and a half dollars worth of free medical care and treated an average of 500 charity cases a year. It had the highest percentage of Medicare and Medicaid patients among the 23 hospitals in southwest Alabama; and even when patients qualified for Medicaid, the hospital received only 85% of its costs. In 1983, bed capacity was down to 25%, and after the sisters left, the increased overhead associated with paid staff made the financial problems too large to overcome. The hospital had to close. The remaining elderly patients in the nursing home were transferred to a facility in Montgomery.
During the 1970s, after many of the sisters left Selma, they did not necessarily return to their traditional women's work in schools and hospitals. They worked in new areas such as prisons, pastoral care, and clinics for the poor. Sister Catherine Teresa Martin used her business skills in Selma for 14 years. Notably, she worked with poor black women in the Freedom Quilting Bee cooperative. She put the business on firm ground and it is still active. Sister Mary Weaver, a teacher and social worker, also stayed in Selma and worked in schools, clinics, and government agencies to help people get loans, food, and assistance for heating bills in the winter. Some nurses continued to run the rural health clinics through the 1990s. Four SSJs engage in ministry in Alabama today.