Beyond the glass wall: Black Canadian nurses, 1940-1970

Nursing History Review

Volumn 17, Issue , 2009, Pages 129-152

  Flynn, Karen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53849108804     PISSN: 10628061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1891/1062-8061.17.129     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. Agnes Ellesworth, interview by author, tape recording, Windsor, Ontario, June 5, 2001. The interviews took place in the interviewees' homes and lasted from 1.5 to 3 hours. All interviewees signed written consent forms.
2. Of the nurses who began their training in the late 1940s and early 1950s, only one mentioned choosing to train in a public institution as opposed to a religious-based hospital; for the other women, their decisions were based on convenience and hospitals' willingness to accept them as students.
3. Overall, there is a paucity of research on Black women generally in Canada. Most studies on Black Canadian and Caribbean migrant nurses tend to focus on their experiences as waged laborers and racism in the workplace. See, for example, Agnes Calliste, "Women of 'Exceptional Merit': Immigration of Caribbean Nurses to Canada," Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 6 (1993): 85-103;
4. Tania Das Gupta, Racism and Paid Work (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996);
5. Josephine Etowa, R. Thompson, and S. Sethi, "The Worklife Experiences of African Canadian Nurses," Virginia Henderson International Nursing Library, International Conference, Impact of Global Issues on Women and Children, Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 12-16, 2006, http://www.nursinglibrary. org/portal/main.aspx?pageid+4024&pid=8412, 2006 (accessed November 27, 2007);
6. Karen Flynn, "Experience and Identity: Black Immigrant Nurses to Canada, 1950-1980," in Sisters or Strangers: Immigrant, Ethnic, and Racialized Women in Canadian History, ed. Marlene Epp, Franca Iacovetta, and Frances Swyripa (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 381-97;
7. Margaret Shkimba and Karen Flynn, "In England We Did Nursing': The Experiences of Caribbean and British Nurses in Great Britain and Canada," in New Directions in the History of Nursing: International Perspectives, ed. Susan McGann and Barbara Mortimer (New York: Roudedge, 2005), 141-57.
8. For Michael Foucault, "subjugated knowledge" refers to that which is delegitimized or excluded from what counts as "real knowledge." In this case, Black Canadian women's subjectivities are marginalized within nursing scholarship and Canadian history generally.
9. Kathryn McPherson, Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing 1900-1990 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990);
10. Catherine Judd, Bedside Seductions: Nursing and the Victorian Imagination, 1830-1880 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996).
11. Letter to G. Roberts, President, Toronto Coloured Liberal Association, July 14, 1940, Archives of Ontario (AO), RG 10-107-0-166, container 23, file #1 ("Nurses Training,) etc.," 1939-1940;
12. McPherson, Beside Matters, 119;
13. Karen Flynn, "Im Glad That Someone Is Telling the Nursing Story': Writing Black Canadian Women's History," Journal of Black Studies 3, no. 38 (January 2008): 445.
14. Miss A. M. Munn, RN, Director, Nurses' Registration, Letter to Dr. B. T. McGhie, Deputy Minister of Health, October 2, 1940, AO, RG 10-107-0-166, container 23, file#l ("Nurses Training,) etc.," 1939-1940;
15. McPherson, Beeide Matters, 119;
16. Flynn, "I'm Glad That Someone Is Telling the Nursing Story," 446.
17. Munn, Letter to Dr. B. T. McGhie; McPherson, Bedside Matters, 119.
18. Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession 1890-1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), xx.
19. Karen Flynn, "Race, the State and Caribbean Immigrant Nurses, 1950-1965," in Women, Health, and Nation: Canada and the United States Since 1945, ed. Georgina Feldberg, Molly Ladd-Taylor, Alison Li, and Kathryn McPherson (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003), 259.
20. Munn, Letter to Dr. B. T. McGhie; Flynn, "Race, the State, and Caribbean Immigrant Nurses," 259.
21. Library and Archives Canada Record Group, 76, vol. 553-110, pt. 2, to Director of Immigration; from Eastern District Superintendent, Montreal, Quebec, "Haitian Nurses Aides," June 9, 1958.
22. Flynn, "Race, the State and Caribbean Immigrant Nurses," 257.
23. Flynn, "Race, the State and Caribbean Immigrant Nurses," 257.
24. For Black Canadian and Caribbean organizations in Canada, see, for example, Calliste, "Women of Exceptional Merit"; Constance Backhouse, "'Bitterly Disappointed' at the Spread of 'Colour-Bar Tactics': Viola Desmond's Challenge to Racial Segregation, Nova Scotia, 1946," in Backhouse, Colour-Coded A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 226-71;
25. Amoaba Gooden, "Community Organizing by African-Caribbeans in Toronto, Ontario," Journal of Black Studies 3, no. 38 (January 2008): 413-26;
26. Peggy Bristow, "A Duty to the Past, A Promise to the Future: Black Organizing in Windsor-The Depression, World War II, and the Postwar Years," New Dawn: Journal of Black Canadian Studies 2, no. 1 (2007): 15-59.
27. McPherson, Bedside Matters, 211.
28. Julia Hallam, Nursing the Image: Media, Culture and Professional Identity (London: Roudedge, 2000), 5.
29. Sheila Mackay Russell, "'The Glass Wall': A New Chapter in the Human Drama in a Hospital," Chatelaine (October 1964): 69.
30. Russell, "The Glass Wall," 68.
31. Particularly in the U.S. context, the idea of Black people as socially and biologically inferior has historically been used to justify their subordination. According to Ronald Davis, "This image functioned as the racial bedrock of American popular culture after 1900, especially manifested in minstrel shows, the vaudeville theatre, songs and music, film and radio, and commercial advertising."
32. See, for example, Ronald L. F. Davis, "Popular Art and Racism: Embedding Racial Stereotypes in the American Mindset: Jim Crow and Popular Culture," http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/ hs_es_popular_culture.htm (accessed April 2, 2007).
33. On science and racism, see, for example, Stephen J. Gould, TheMismeasureofMan (New York: Norton, 1981).
34. Suzanne Lego, "White Nurse Can Help Negro Change Self-image," Canadian Nurse 62 (August 1966): 12.
35. McPherson, Bedside Matters, 17.
36. See, for example, Robert Dingwall, Anne Marie Rafferty, and Charles Webster, eds., An Introduction to the Social History of Nursing (London: Roudedge, 1998).
37. Hallam, Nursing the Image, 11.
38. Richard Dyer, "White," Screen 29 (Autumn 1988): 44-64.
39. David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991), 13.
40. "The Atkinson School of Nursing: Toronto Western Hospital Presents: This Was Vaudeville," March 16-17, 1967, Pulse: The Atkinson School ofNursingYearbook (1967): 18-19.
41. "Churches Rapped!!! Grizzle, Moore Speak Out Against Minstrel Shows," Canadian Negro 4, no. 1 (March 1956): 1.
42. Hallam, Nursing the Image, 25.
43. "Churches Rapped," 1.
44. Ken Alexander and Avis Glaze, Towards Freedom: The African-Canadian Experience (Toronto: Umbrella Press: 1996), 150. Viola Desmond's story of being forcibly ejected from a movie theater in Nova Scotia exemplifies the de facto nature of racial segregation in Canada; see Backhouse, " 'Bitterly Disappointed.' "
45. Marlene Watson, interview by author, tape recording, Toronto, Ontario, January 18, 2000.
46. Laura Tynes, interview by author, tape recording, Mississauga, Ontario, December 6, 1999.
47. Virginia Travis, interview by author, tape recording, Windsor, Ontario, June 5, 2001.
48. Travis interview.
49. Ray Greenridge, "Labor, Churches Urged to Back Fight Against Dresden Race Discrimination," Canadian Negro 2, no. 1 (February 1954): 1.
50. "The Racial Discrimination Act Adopted in Ontario," http://www.chrcccdp.ca/en/timePortals/milestones/45mile.asp (accessed April 2, 2007).
51. Alexander and Glaze, Towards Freedom, 151.
52. See, for example, Ross Lambertson, ""The Dresden Story': Racism, Human Rights and the Jewish Labour Committee of Canada," Labour/Le Travail 47 (2001): 1-36;
53. Roger McTair, Journey to Justice, National Film Board of Canada, 2000.
54. There is also an earlier version of this film entitled The Dresden Story, National Film Board of Canada, 1954.
55. Lambertson, "The Dresden Story," 13.
56. Frieda Steele, interview by author, tape recording, Windsor, Ontario, June 9, 2001.
57. For an excellent discussion of the CCA, which was later renamed the Central Citizens Association fot the Advancement of Colored People, see Bristow, "A Duty to the Past, A Promise to the Future."
58. "Prevented Violence at Dresden," Canadian Negro 2, no. 3 (February 1954): 3.
59. Darlene Barnes, interview by author, tape recording, Toronto, Ontario, October 22, 1999.
60. Barnes interview.
61. Russell, "The Glass Wall," 66.
62. Tynes interview.
63. Steele interview.
64. Ellesworth interview.
65. See, for example, Flynn, "Race, the State and Caribbean Migrant Nurses"; Shkimba and Flynn, "In England We Did Nursing."
66. "What Is a Student Nurse?" The Pulse (1967): 23.
67. Ellesworth interview.
68. Travis interview.
69. Tynes interview.
70. Ellesworth interview.
71. Steele interview.
72. "Girls Nurse Proprietor But Said Not Wanted as Roadhouse Guests," Windsor Star, June 14, 1950.
73. Marty Gervais, "My Town - Ugly Incident Didn't Break Spirit or End Friendship," Windsor Star, September 18, 2000.
74. Barbara Melosh, "The Physician's Hand": Work, Culture, and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 37.
75. Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong, Wasting Away: The Undermining of Canadian Health Care (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), 121.
76. See McPherson, Bedside Matters.
77. David Coburn, "Professionalization and Proletarianization: Medicine, Nursing and Chiropractic in Historical Perspective," Labour/Le Travail 34 (Fall 1994): 139-62.
78. Ellesworth interview.
79. Travis interview.
80. Steele interview.
81. Russell, "The Glass Wall," 68.
82. Steele interview.
83. Travis interview.
84. Edna Black Searles, interview by author, tape recording, Scarborough, Ontario, September 4, 1999.
85. Hine, Black Women in White, xvii.
86. Searles interview.