Black Women in White by Darlene Clark Hine

Author:Darlene Clark Hine [Hine, Darlene Clark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780253056955
Google: Yp0eEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-07-29T03:29:22+00:00

Unfortunately the St. Charles Hotel, the site of the meeting, made it clear that blacks were not welcome. Its managers stipulated that all black guests must “use the service entrance and freight elevator.” Riddle sent a telegram to Stimson from her home in Akron, Ohio, urging her to use her official position as the ANA’s president to protest this discrimination. She also wrote to Claribel Wheeler, executive secretary of the National League of Nursing Education, suggesting that a protest of some sort was in order.50 Wheeler did not respond. The reply Riddle received from ANA headquarters was unsatisfactory. Instead of protesting the hotel’s discriminatory treatment of blacks in general, and of Riddle in particular, Stimson offered to meet Riddle “at the train and enter the hotel’s service entrance and elevator” with her.51 In a follow-up letter Riddle was asked to understand that “neither she [Stimson] personally, nor the A.N.A. can deal with the racial question involved.”52

Riddle appreciated Stimson’s position and did not question her personal interest in black nurses, yet she found the substitute proposal unacceptable. She rejoined that Stimson’s offer to meet her at the train and accompany her on the freight elevator “would make neither the ANA nor the hotel management aware of any facing of the problem.” Riddle correctly observed, “Then, too, she [Stimson] could not escort me to and from every meeting during the week, and there are other Negro nurses to be considered.”53 The racial discrimination of southern hotels proved a major impediment to almost all black professionals during this period, preventing many from attending conventions and conferences.

Riddle had also sought advice from Walter White and Ruth Logan Roberts as to how best to handle this issue. Both advised her to refuse to attend the meeting. White bluntly declared that he “could not imagine any self-respecting person submitting to the humiliation of using service entrance and elevators.” White elaborated, “Since you asked my advice I would strongly urge you both as President of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and as a self-respecting individual to refuse to attend unless you could enter the meeting places on the same bases as anyone else.” He continued, “The A.N.A. and the N.L.N.E. should be asked to take an unequivocal stand just as other organizations … have taken the stand that they will not go to a city unless all delegates can be treated alike.”54

Roberts took a more direct approach than White and drafted a chilly letter to Stimson. She chastised Stimson for her handling of the matter and then recommended that “this unfortunate occurrence may be used as an educational experience for your group.” Roberts objected to the ANA’s “philosophy of defeatism,” describing it as “suicidal in this day of growing intolerance.” She explained that whenever individuals and organizations “have been clear and positive in their desire to insure the basic civil and human rights of all people they have been able to impress hotel managers and other less enlightened individuals with the importance of this principle.”55 Neither the ANA nor the NLNE wanted any publicity given to this matter.

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