Or, choose specific topics to right.
Notes on the State of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson. It is a foundational text on racism; in Notes, Jefferson defines African Americans as inferior to whites.
Laying of cornerstone of first building at the University of Virginia. Building the university depends on the work of enslaved laborers.
Official opening of the University of Virginia to students.
Read: Louis Nelson and Maurie McInnis, "Landscape of Slavery," in Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University (University of Virginia Press, 2019).
U.S. Civil War ends. 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery in the United States.
Civil Rights Act of 1866 enacted.
14th Amendment is ratified.
Act of Congress readmits Virginia into the Union.
The first three schools of nursing along the Nightingale model are formed (Connecticut Training School for Nurses, Boston Training School for Nurses, and Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses). Advances in medical science and technology came about in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which drove the expansion of hospitals and the demand for a trained nursing staff. Thus, schools of nursing grew up alongside new hospitals to provide this workforce.
In the era of Jim Crow segregation, the practices of racial discrimination and racial exclusion were widespread among nursing schools in the North, and nursing schools in the South were segregated. Beginning in the 1890s, Black physicians, educational institutions, churches, and community organizations, sometimes with funding from white philanthropists, established Black schools of nursing. The first Black nursing schools, included:
1886 – Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia
1891 – Provident Hospital School of Nursing, Chicago, Illinois
1891 – Dixie Hospital Training School, Hampton, Virginia
1892 – Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama
Read: Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Indiana University Press, 1989).
Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Mary Eliza Mahoney becomes the first trained African American nurse in the United States, graduating from the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
The Supreme Court decision, Plessy v Ferguson, upholds Jim Crow laws, legalizing segregation in public places by establishing the "separate but equal" ruling. This lasted for more than fifty years.
The University of Virginia School of Nursing opens. It remains a segregated institution with an all-white student body and faculty until the civil rights era. During the early 20th century, several faculty and administrators in the University of Virginia School of Medicine were prominent eugenicists, including some of the medical faculty who also participated in the instruction of nursing students. For example, Harvey Jordan and Lawrence Thomas Royster, both medical school faculty, and Edwin Alderman, university President, are featured in the class photo from 1930.
Read: Karin Skeen and Barbra Mann Wall, Nursing and Eugenics in the Early 20th Century United States
Read: Gregory Michael Dorr, Assuring America's Place in the Sun: Ivey Foreman Lewis and the Teaching of Eugenics at the University of Virginia, 1915-1953
The University of Virginia Hospital opens under the direction of Paul Barringer to support the university's medical school and to provide subsidized health care to Virginians. It is designed to uphold white supremacy. Barringer was a leader of the eugenics movement, and the hospital becomes an academic center for eugenics. The hospital was also a segregated institution, with a separate entrance and basement wards for Black patients, while middle class and wealthy white patients were assigned private rooms on the ground and second floors. Indigent white patents were assigned to open words on the ground floor.
Read: Dan Cavanaugh, UVA and the History of Race: Confronting Labor Discrimination
New York Public Library
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The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) is founded, which launches African American nurses on path of professionalization and enhances their work in eliminating racial segregation in nursing.
Virginia Sterilization Act and Racial Integrity Act.
The sterilization act allowed for the legal sterilization of people deemed to have undesirable traits, this included people with epilepsy, mental illness, and cognitive disabilities. The Racial Integrity Act prohibited interracial marriage and defined as white a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian." These laws were shaped by the race science of eugenics.
The Racial Integrity Act divided Virginia's population into two racial categories - white or Black. These racial categories were defined and policed by the Bureau of Vital Statistics, which was led by Walter Ashby Plecker, the State Registrar of Vital Statistics. Plecker demanded that anyone claiming to be Indian be classified as Black. This erased Native people in Virginia from official records, including the census. Although Virginia repealed the Racial Integrity Act in 1967, Plecker's policies to legally reclassify Native people in Virginia continues to impact Native peoples' claims to legal rights, land and tribal recognition.
Read: Karin Skeen and Barbra Mann Wall, Nursing and Eugenics in the Early 20th Century United States
Read: P. Preston Reynolds, UVA and the History of Race: Eugenics, the Racial Integrity Act, Health Disparities
Read: Gregory Michael Dorr, Assuring America's Place in the Sun: Ivey Foreman Lewis and the Teaching of Eugenics at the University of Virginia, 1915-1953
Read: Christian McMillen, UVA and the History of Race: The George Rogers Clark Statue and Native Americans
Read: Angela Gonzalez, Judy Kertesz, and Gabrielle Tayac, Eugenics as Indian Removal: Sociohistorical Processes and the De(con)structure of American Indians in the Southeast
The Rockefeller Foundation financed a survey of the state of Black women in the nursing profession, conducted by white English-Canadian nurse, Ethel Johns. The study was never published, its findings highlighting the dire effects of racial inequities in education, discriminatory employment conditions, professional exclusion, and racism on Black nurses.
On January 16, 28 Black women employed at the University of Virginia Hospital staged a walkout after hospital Superintendent Dr. Carlisle S. Lentz refused to accept their petition for higher wages. Black women were relegated to the position of "ward maids," where they assisted nurses, changed linens, and performed essential work supporting the hospital's clinicians. Among the hospital's paid staff, they earned the lowest wages and worked the longest hours.
Black employees at UVA Hospital formally organized themselves as Local 550 of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America. (In later years, Local 550 changed its affiliation to United Public Workers-CIO). The employees organized in the hopes of securing better wages and working conditions and challenging racial discrimination at the hospital. At this time, the hospital practiced a racial division of labor in which administrative positions, medical faculty appointments , and trade positions were reserved for white men. Nursing and clerical positions were reserved for white women. Black men and women could only gain employment as orderlies, cooks, and ward maids. In these positions, they worked long hours and received low wages. Black employees at UVA Hospital achieved significant victories through their collection action, including reduction in hours, salary increases, better benefits, and status as state employees.
Hill-Burton Act, or Hospital Survey and Construction Act. This act gave hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care facilities federal grants to construct new hospitals and to modernize existing ones, in return for the promise of provision of health services to communities regardless of ability to pay. The act did not, however, mandate desegregation of hospitals and other health care facilities as a prerequisite for obtaining federal funding. Thus, federal money was used to build racially-exclusive hospitals.
Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia
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Congress establishes the Exchange Visitor Program. This program promised internationally educated nurses an American cultural immersion through a two-year educational experience at U.S. hospitals, including UVA Hospital. The meaning of education, however, varied across hospitals and exchange nurses served as a cheap labor source. By the late 1960s, the majority of exchange nurses hailed from Asia, notably the Philippines.
Read: Reynaldo Capucao, Filipino Nurses and the United States at Hampton Roads, Virginia: The Importance of Place?, Nursing History Review, 28 (2019): 158-169.
Read: Catherine Ceniza Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History, (Duke University Press, 2003).
UVA Historical Collections
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First African American student, Gregory Swanson, is admitted to the University of Virginia's Law School after the U.S. Supreme Court passes Sweatt v Painter, which bans racial segregation in professional and graduate schools. That law, however, does not apply to undergraduate or K-12 schools.
UVA Hospital hired its first Black registered nurses: Honor Mobley, Weda Gilmore, and Annie White. The following year, the hospital hired Grace White, Fanny Randolph, and Belle Henry.
National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses formally dissolves on January 26. In 1946, the segregated board of both the American Nurses Association and the NACGN endorsed the principle of one integrated professional organization for all nurses. Twenty years later, ongoing racism within the ANA and other majority-white professional nursing organizations led Black nurses (and other nurses of color) to re-establish their own professional organizations beginning in the 1970s, including the National Black Nurses Association in 1971.
Read: Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Indiana University Press, 1989).
Jackson P. Burley School, a Black high school in Charlottesville, establishes a Licensed Practical Nurses Program in collaboration with the University of Virginia School of Nursing.
During the years of Jim Crow segregation, Black women and men were excluded from UVA School of Nursing. The Burley-UVA LPN training program, however, provided Black women and men with a pathway into nursing. The more than 150 graduates of the LPN program went on to desegregate the UVA hospital and had a major impact on their patients and communities. Despite being graduates of a UVA program, they were denied alumni status until 2019.
See: Anne Bromley, "UVA Shines Light of Recognition on African American Nurses it Trained Decades Ago."
Read: Lucille Stout Smith, Unforgettable: Jackson P. Burley High School, 1951-1967 (2022).
Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education, bans racial segregation in public schools, affirming that separate but equal schools are not, in fact, equal. Virginia is connected because it was one of five legal cases (e.g., Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia) involved in the decision.
Read: James H. Hershman Jr., UVA and the History of Race: The Era of Massive Resistance
Simkins v. Cone. Supreme Court declines to review lower courts' decision in case brought by African American dentist, George Simkins, against segregated Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina, for refusing to admit one of his patients. The U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Simkins, and the decision ushered in the beginning of the end of racial segregation by hospitals.
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations and racial discrimination in employment. This effectively ended Jim Crow laws, which the Supreme Court had upheld in its 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare into law, which establishes the health insurance program for Americans over 65. This law also included the signing of Medicaid, a health insurance program for low-income persons. Unlike the Hill-Burton Act, the Medicare law mandated desegregation of hospitals and other health care facilities to get public funding. Black-controlled hospitals became peripheral to Black Americans, and they remain so today.
Complaint filed with the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare by the NAACP to investigate civil rights violations and discrimination by the University of Virginia Hospital.
The Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority utilized eminent domain to acquire Vinegar Hill, a center for residential, business, and culture for African Americans, raze it, and attempt to redevelop it.
See: www.fieldstudiofilms.com/that-world-is-gone
See: www2.iath.virginia.edu/schwartz/vhill/vhill.history.html
Mavis Claytor is the first African American woman to obtain her BSN from the UVA School of Nursing. She went on to obtain her MSN from UVA School of Nursing in 1985.
Read: Victoria Tucker, "Race and Place in Virginia: The Case of Nursing," Nursing History Review, 28 (2019): 143-157.
Expansion of the UVA Health System leads to the displacement of residents in the historically African American neighborhood of Gospel Hill, an area originally settled by free Black families in the antebellum era. During the 1970s and 1980s, the University of Virginia acquired homes and businesses in Gospel Hill and constructed Jordan (now renamed Pinn) Hall, McLeod Hall (site of the School of Nursing), the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, parking garages, and a new hospital building.
Publication of Report of the Task Force of Afro-American Affairs, which was established by University president Robert O'Neil to investigate the state of race relations on UVA Grounds. The report examined the past, present, and future of race relations at UVA. It found that while some progress had been made in terms of race relations, the "self-transformation of the University of Virginia into a genuinely integrated institution equally receptive to people of all races is far from complete.
Read: Claudrena N. Harold, "No Ordinary Sacrifice: The Struggle for Racial Justice at the University of Virginia in the Post-Civil Rights Era," in Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity (University of Virginia Press, 2018).
The Office of Equal Opportunity Programs publishes its report, "An Examination of the University's Minority Classified Staff (The Muddy Floor Report)." The report highlighted "glaring disparities" in employment opportunities, performance evaluations, and disciplinary sanctions between white and Black employees. It found that African Americans were overrepresented in unskilled positions in the University, and virtually nonexistent in high-salaried, managerial positions.
Read: Claudrena N. Harold, "No Ordinary Sacrifice: The Struggle for Racial Justice at the University of Virginia in the Post-Civil Rights Era," in Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity (University of Virginia Press, 2018).
IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Excellence, Achievement) is initiated at UVA School of Nursing. The overarching goal of IDEA is to improve respect, inclusion, and engagement in the school's community of students, staff, and faculty.
The Charlottesville City Council creates the Blue-Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces.
In 2017, the Charlottesville City Council votes to remove the Robert E. Lee statue and rename Lee Park to Emancipation Park.
After Donald Trump elected President of the U.S., there is an uptick in racist acts in the UVA Hospital from patients and their families. This precipitated the establishment of "Stepping In" training, in which the School of Nursing is involved(for example, nursing students testifying about their experiences in the hospital).
All 3rd and 4th year BSN students, BSN faculty and clinical instructors, and CNL students, participate in the training, Stepping In: Responding to Disrespectful and Biased Behavior in Health Care.
Unite the Right protesters, led by UVA alumni, march on the Grounds of the University of Virginia in protest of the city's plan to remove the Lee statue. One white supremacist drives his car into a group of counter protesters that results in the death of Heather Heyer. Two others perish as well: police officers Trooper-Pilot Berke M. Bates and Pilot Lt. H. Jay Cullen, who die from a helicopter crash as they covered the incident.
Nurses working in triage tents and in local emergency departments take care of people injured during the protests.
See: Nurses and the violent aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally
Jordan Hall is renamed Pinn Hall, for Dr. Vivian Pinn (Med ‘67), the only woman and only African American student in her class at the UVA School of Medicine.
Racist photo in medical school yearbook leads to widespread calls for Virginia Governor, Ralph Northam, MD, to resign.
In 2019, the SON held a recognition ceremony to honor the graduates of the Burley High School/UVA LPN Training Program and officially recognize them as alumni of the University of Virginia. The ceremony was attended by twenty-five of these nurses and their families and friends, in which they were acknowledged for their many contributions. They were also given a public apology from the School of Nursing Dean and inducted into the UVA Alumni Association by the UVA president.
Kaiser Health News reports that UVA Health System had sued patients 36,000 times for more than $106 million from 2013 to June 2018, seizing paychecks and putting liens on homes.
News of the UVA Health System's practice leads UVA students to call for change in the medical center's billing practices.
The activism of Filipino nurses in Virginia leads to the overturning Virginia Board of Nursing law, which had required internationally educated nurses to list "foreign graduate nurse" on their hospital name tags. This designation is replaced with "RN Applicant."
The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, prompted a reckoning at the UVA School of Nursing, making clear that the School of Nursing were not making the deep substantive changes necessary to truly become an antiracist school. During summer 2020, an Antiracism Working Group comprised of students, faculty and staff in the School of Nursing mobilized and met weekly throughout the summer and into the fall to develop further concrete actions to address racism and other bias in the hospital. The goal of this student-led group aimed to prepare students and faculty to address racism and other forms of bias, as a target of, witness to, or perpetrator of this behavior in clinical settings. The group felt it to be essential for nursing students and other stakeholders to have a background understanding of the history of race and racism in our local context before engaging in clinical practice.
Milania Harris and Zahra Alisa, 3rd year BSN students, establish new student group – Advocates for Medical Equality. During fall and winter, members of Advocates for Medical Equality developed educational materials that were distributed to nursing students, faculty and staff through weekly "anti-bigotry infographics."
Students of color at UVA call for significant changes to policing practices at the university in response to racial disparities in arrest data. Students' concerns about policing at UVA were made in the wake of the May 25 murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer and nationwide protests calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality.
On June 4, 2020, the American Public Health Association reaffirmed its 2018 policy statement that "law enforcement violence is a public health issue" and restated its "resolve to address it."
See: www.apha.org/news-and-media/news-releases/apha-news-releases/2020/apha-calls-out-police-violence
On July 15, 2020, public health researchers, Rachel R. Hardeman, Eduardo M. Medina, and Rhea W. Boyd, published "Stolen Breaths" in the NEJM, in response to the murder of Floyd and the disparate impact of COVID-19 on Black Americans. As Hardeman, Medina, and Boyd warned, "black people cannot breathe because we are currently battling at least two public health emergencies," both of which are rooted in the long history and ongoing practices of structural racism.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism and violence increased dramatically from the local to national levels. In response, the UVA Student Council passes a resolution condemning "xenophobia, racism and violence against the Asian-American community" and calling on the University to do the same. The resolution also "urges the University to increase funding for Multicultural Student Services programming which provides extensive opportunities that provide a safe space for and amplify the voices of the Asian-American community, along with multiple other multicultural and diverse communities at the University." This builds on a decades-long struggle by students and faculty to increase support for - and the number of courses and faculty devoted to - Asian American studies. And it is part of a longer history of the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans at UVA.
See: news.virginia.edu/content/race-so-different-asians-and-asian-americans-uvas-history
As racism proves to be a public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the lack of public knowledge regarding Asian Americans continues to mark them as foreigners outside the US body politic, making them susceptible to racial violence. This has led to negative outcomes concerning their health.
See: www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-213
See: www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00769-8/fulltext
Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and George Rogers Clark statues in Charlottesville come down.
Undergraduate nursing students establish the Black Student Nurses Alliance. The goal of the BSNA is to support and create community among Black students at the School of Nursing.
Undergraduate nursing students, Ana Aguirre and Annalisa Cintron, cofound the Latinx Nursing Student Union. As described by Cintron, the LNSU's goal is to "create forums to come together, celebrate Latinx voices, and build communities where especially undergraduate and graduate Latinx students can mingle."
