![\"Julia](\"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Julia_smith2-600x400.jpg\")
<\/a>Laura Baverman<\/p>
Julia Smith, 97, worked as a nurse at St. Agnes Hospital at St. Augustine’s College. Photo by Laura Baverman.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cYou had to do what was right. You took care of patients. Integration had not been thought about and we didn\u2019t pay attention,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Smith, a long-time resident of Southeast Raleigh, was the first of her family (of 10 kids) to go to high school, leaving the farm 15 miles outside Columbia, S.C. at age 12 to live with a cousin in the city.<\/p>\n
When recruiters from St. Augustine\u2019s College of Raleigh visited her high school, and she learned about the nursing program at St. Agnes, she took a job babysitting to earn tuition money.<\/p>\n
She was ridiculed for leaving home to work. People thought her a little country girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t considered. People thought I was just a nobody,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In November 1934, she cried herself all the way to Raleigh on a train. But that didn\u2019t last long. Nursing school had an intense schedule that began at 6 a.m. and ended after 7 each night. The only breaks afforded short trips to the 5- and 10-cent store downtown or the theater on Salisbury Street. Black people sat on the third floor, whites on the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t know anything about the civil movement at the time,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe did what we had to do. We were fine. We were well fed. We had comfortable housing, and in fact, I had better housing than I\u2019d had in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Agnes Hospital and the nursing school were first opened in 1896 by the historically black college, with funds raised by Sara Hunter, wife of its principal.\u00a0 Prior to it, African Americans had access only to a small hospital at Shaw University, where students at Leonard Medical School trained and served patients. But there was a great need for more care.<\/p>\n
![\"StAg1\"](\"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/StAg1-600x420.jpg\")
<\/a>Karen Tam <\/p>
St. Agnes Hospital today. Photo by Karen Tam.<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
From 1904 to 1909, St. Augustine\u2019s students built the facility that sits today roof-less and waiting for redevelopment on Oakwood Avenue next to St. Aug’s. It had 75 beds, and a nurses\u2019 home adjacent.<\/p>\n
For some time, St. Agnes was the only of its kind between New Orleans and Washington D.C., training nurses who would provide care throughout the South and welcoming African-American doctors as interns and residents when white hospitals refused them. In 1943, the hospital received federal aid to train African-American nurses for service in World War II.<\/p>\n
When the hospital was strapped and seeking funds in 1922, Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire of the local diocese wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cMany schools in and about Raleigh offer educational advantages to the young colored men and women. There is only one St. Agnes. No other hospital of a like character and capacity is available for our colored people who stand in need of medical and surgical treatment. It holds out its helping hand to old and young. It has little or no endowment but it endeavors not to turn any poor man or woman away. It is believed to be the largest and best equipped hospital exclusively for colored people in the country south of Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith left the hospital for a period after graduating nursing school. She worked at hospitals in Wilmington and Tampa, Fla. and as a private nurse back in Raleigh after she married in 1940. During the war, she moved with her husband to Pittsburgh and then traveled back to Florida to care for patients there. She returned to St. Agnes in 1955.<\/p>\n
Smith became known all over Raleigh\u2014she\u2019d care for patients at their homes. They\u2019d move into hers for care.<\/p>\n
![\"St.](\"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/stag2-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Karen Tam <\/p>
Photo by Karen Tam.<\/p><\/div>\n
\nWith the money she made, she built her parents a better house back at the South Carolina farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have done things that few people get the opportunity to do. I\u2019ve cared for people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Smith has been recognized among the best nurses to work at the hospital, said Irene Clark, a St. Agnes historian.<\/p>\n
\u201cFormer doctors like George Desmond speak very highly of her,\u201d Clark said. Smith often assisted with formulations of medicine. She was always eager to learn, taking a class called Materia Medica.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has an outstanding reputation for working with babies, children as well as adult patients,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
The African American Cultural Center at North Carolina State University has called Smith a \u201cLiving Legend of St. Agnes.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the hospital closed in April 1961, Smith was tapped as a head nurse in the pediatric wing at the new Wake County hospital on New Bern Avenue, now WakeMed.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d be among the last of the St. Agnes staff to serve patients in the old hospital, and the first to care for babies in the African American wing at Wake. Smith manned the maternity ward on the third floor by herself that first week at Wake, caring for the first baby, a preemie.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state of North Carolina required they had a registered nurse take care of that premature baby, and I was the only one in sight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
By the time Smith retired from nursing 16 years later, Wake had long been an integrated facility. But even at its start, Smith remembers it as a place where people of all kinds worked together and respected each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t even consider whatever race or color they were. We took care of patients. That was true of the white nurses as well as me,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had the opportunity to serve all people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Julia Smith, 97, worked as a nurse at St. Agnes Hospital at St. Augustine\u2019s College, the only hospital of its kind for African Americans between Washington D.C. and New Orleans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24062,"featured_media":18235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,23],"tags":[1154],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24062"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}