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Editorials/Columns
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN
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Mary Seacole: Florence Nightingale’s Contemporary
PART II
hile Seacole was
visiting her brother in Cruces, Panama in 1851, there was a cholera outbreak that gave her the opportunity to treat people again who were ill with cholera. When her first patient got well, Sea- cole received wide recogni- tion for healing the patient and people began to flock to
her in droves.
She treated the poor for
free and charged wealthy pa- tients. Seacole returned to Jamaica near the beginning of the Crimean War and tried several times to volunteer to go to the war zone to treat wounded soldiers.
After being refused re- peatedly by the British offi- cials, Seacole used her own money to travel to an area near the war zone where she established a facility called The British Hotel that pro- vided nursing, food and com- fortable sleeping areas for sick and wounded soldiers.
She also visited the battle- fields, selling food and other items while tending to wounded soldiers, and be- came popular and affection- ately called “Mother Seacole” to the British Army.
Even though Florence Nightingale received recog- nition and accolades for her work for tending the wounded in the Crimean War, Mary Seacole received recognition only in more re- cent years.
In 1991, Seacole was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit Medal, was voted the greatest Black Briton in 2004, and had a stamp with her portrait issued in 2005.
In America, women like
Susie Taylor, Harriett Tubman, Mary Elizabeth Mahoney, and Estelle
Massey Osborne were waiting in the wings to place their mark on nursing in America beginning with the Civil War.
Susie King Taylor (1848 – 1912) and Harriett Tubman (1822—1913) both born into slavery, served as cooks, scouts, nurses, laun- dresses, and spies for the Union Army during the Civil War. At one time, they worked together as nurses for the First Regiment of the South Carolina Volunteers in 1862, one of the first Black regiments in the Union Army made up of escaped slaves from South Carolina.
Taylor’s ability to read and write earned her the re- spect of army officers who asked her to organize a school for freed slaves in which she taught when not helping camp doctors to care for in- jured soldiers on St. Simons Island, Georgia.
Taylor eventually moved to Boston, Massachusetts where she joined and then be- came president of the Women’s Relief Corps, which gave assistance to soldiers and hospitals.
Taylor wrote her Civil War memoirs as the first and only continuous written record of activities of Black nurses.
Mary Elizabeth Ma- honey (1845 – 1926) became the first Black woman to com- plete nurses training in the United States after she grad- uated from nursing training at the New England Hospital for women and Children in 1878 at age 33.
One of the three graduates out of 40 applicants in her class to receive a diploma, Mahoney had worked as a maid at the hospital for 16 years before being admitted to the nursing program.
She co-founded the Na- tional Association of Colored
Graduate Nurses (NACEN) which merged with the Amer- ican Nurses Association in 1951.
Mahoney was inducted into the American Nurses As- sociation Hall of Fame in 1976, the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, and has a medal named in her honor by the American Nurses As- sociation. The Mary Mahoney Medal is given biennially to a person making the most progress toward opening full opportunities in the nursing field for all – regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin.
Today, I wish to give honor and praise to Black nurses in the Tampa Bay area. For, they, too, have made a tremendous differ- ence in the state of health in the Black community begin- ning with Nurse Clara Frye, who opened her home to tend the sick and for whom a Black hospital was named in the early 20th century.
Nurses Cash Carter, Pauline Cole, Cecilia Cambridge, Olga Thomp- son, Waldena Byers, Eliz- abeth Smith, Geraldine Twine, Louella Carring- ton, Daisy Sweeting, Doris Reddick – all pio- neers whose skin required them to face racism, discrim- ination, disrespect, and pro- fessional scorn from white colleagues to whom they had to prove their competence – opened doors to Tampa Gen- eral, St. Joseph and Memorial Hospitals and white doctors’ offices for nurses of younger generations.
The volunteer services you gave at community health fairs – performing blood pressure, diabetes and prena- tal screenings, health and nu- trition lectures, immunizations and teenage pregnancy prevention work- shops, healthy babies and parenting workshops – helped raise the health status of Black communities in the Tampa Bay Area.
Support of the Black Nurses Historical Organiza- tion will help keep your his- tory alive and will remind all of America that Black nurses have made a difference in our cities, counties, states, nation, and the world.
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C. Blythe Andrews 1901-1977 (1945)
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Autocratic Legislative Business Protectionism
ayor Bob Buckhorn has a right to be upset by the
Florida Legislature’s plan to limit the ability of city majors, city councils, county administrators and county com- missions to regulate businesses located in their jurisdictions. Attempts to micromanage counties and municipalities by the legislature are a classic example of legislative autocracy. Even though the role and authority of the legislature is to make laws, House Bill 17 smacks of business protectionism, a Republican tradition.
House Bill 17 would “prohibit cities, counties, and other government organizations from passing any regulations on businesses unless they have been given specific permission from the state Legislature, and will repeal existing rules al- ready in place in 2020. The claim that the bill is designed to eliminate confusion for people trying to start a business in multiple counties or cities doesn’t hold water and is hypocrit- ical considering their national “less government” stance.
For instance, gays, lesbians, and transgender, as well as same-sex married citizens are not protected by state law from discrimination, but are protected by numerous city and county ordinances.
Furthermore, cities and counties could possibly no longer protect workers who were cheated out of wages; and could be prevented from enacting zoning laws that protect children and churches.
This bill needs to be “deep-sixed” and every legislator who supports the bill should be sent home in a hurry during the next election.
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FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2017 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5-A
A Sneak Attack Against Democracy!
e condemn the prohibition of seven major news
media and their representative personnel from re- cently attending a Trump Administration press briefing, and we join others who consider such act not only as an insult to professional journalism, but see it as a lethal attack against the legacy of American Democracy and its tradition of free and open news.
Maybe, usually Conservative Senator John McCain said it best when he explained, “Suppressing free press is how dic- tators get started.”
Now, who could McCain have been talking about? But even more importantly, do you know what we’re talking about that happened just the other day while we drank our morning coffee? In a move that stunned not only reporters, but also historians, members of CNN, The New York Times, Buzz Feed News, The Los Angeles Times, and Politico showed up for a routine West Wing briefing only to be told neither they nor their organizations were welcome in the White House.
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Professionals who were never at a loss for words were struck dumb. Democrats stam- mered, and the only one who spoke clearly was President Donald Trump who blatantly pressed his autocratic argument that the American media was the “Enemy of the American Public.”
No, The Florida Sentinel Bulletin is not The New York Times. But does the name really matter? When the Powers-that-Be, intent on destroying the tradition of free speech, reach out for The New York Times, or The Tampa Bay Times, can The Florida Sentinel Bulletin or any journal, radio news, cable, or online news that intends to tell the truth be out of danger?
So, readers, we appeal to you. Remember the words of John McCain. Suppression of free press comes first; then comes the choking of free speech. Says McCain, “That’s how dictators get started.”