The Church of St. Andrew Presents: The Black Angels: The Untold Stories of the Nurses who helped Cure Tuberculosis. By Maria Smilios
The Autumn History Lecture:
The Black Angels: The Untold Stories of the Nurses who helped Cure Tuberculosis.
By Maria Smilios
Sunday September 24, 2017 2 pm
Free and open to the Public. Reception follows immediately in Burch Hall.
Maria Smilios is the author of the forthcoming book The Black Angels: The Untold Stories of the Nurses who helped Cure Tuberculosis, which tells the story of 300 black nurses who helped to prevent a public health crisis in New York when the white nurses of Sea View Hospital announced they would no longer work at Staten Island’s renowned TB sanatorium citing concerns over the working conditions. City officials agreed to something radical: they would sanction a national call for “colored nurses” to come and work at Sea View. They offered incentives: schooling, money, housing, and above all, as they saw it, the “rare opportunity” to work in a hospital without segregated wards and quotas like Harlem, Lincoln, and Bellevue in Manhattan. The book will be published in the United States by Oprah Books in 2018 and in the UK by Virago books.
In the past, Maria has written for Narratively, The Guardian, Dame Magazine, and The Jewish Daily Forward among others. A New York native, Maria holds Masters of Arts from Boston University in Religion & Literature where she was a Henry Luce Scholar and a Presidential Scholar and where she taught Essay & Research writing in the university’s Writing Program. In 2007, she left Boston University to teach at an all-girls high school in New York City, where she created and ran an intensive summer writing program for teens.
The Church of Saint Andrew
40 Old Mill Road
Staten Island, New York 10306
718.351.0900
Rev. Aaron Hudson, Rector
