The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis, by Maria Smilios
In the first half of the 20th century, tuberculosis killed 5.6 million Americans. The contagion spread through overcrowded tenements lacking plumbing and hygiene. Some TB patients recovered through an enforced regimen of bed rest and fresh air in sanitoriums. Others were subjected to dangerous surgeries that tried to root out the infection. There was no cure until the 1950s when new drugs were introduced to fight the bacteria causing TB.
The Black Angels tells the story of the Black nurses at a Staten Island TB sanitorium from the Great Depression through the introduction of antibiotics. Because TB was so contagious, the work was dangerous and often left to Black women at a time when African Americans were barred from many jobs. Much of the story focuses on Edna Sutton. She dreamed of being a surgeon but settled for the Harlem School of Nursing. New York City was waging war against TB and Black nurses became the foot soldiers, even the cannon fodder.
Conditions on Staten Island were poor, shifts were long; Sutton and her Black staff were closely scrutinized. “Edna could not allow a single mistake,” writes the author, science writer Maria Smilios. The Black Angels folds its story into the larger struggle for civil rights in the urban north that began well before the more remembered fight against southern Jim Crow.
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