THE BLACK ANGELS

A breathless but illuminating conquest-of-disease narrative.

In her first book, Smilios explains that, unlike fiercely contagious infections (measles, strep, polio) that attack quickly, tuberculosis comes on slowly, with symptoms that emerge over weeks or months. By 1900, prosperity and improved sanitation had vastly reduced infections among the middle-class, but the poor still suffered in densely packed, dirty tenements. Convinced that the infected endangered the citizenry, New York built a dedicated TB hospital to isolate the worst cases on Staten Island. When Sea View Hospital opened in 1913, it quickly overflowed with patients suffering from an incurable disease, cared for by overworked staff, most of whom became infected. By the 1920s, white nurses began quitting, attracted by better job options for women. Sea View employed a few Black nurses, but most white-run hospitals did not, and nursing schools refused to admit them. Black nursing schools existed, but their graduates often had trouble finding work. Understaffed at the best of times, Sea View faced disaster, so it aggressively recruited Black nurses, who soon became a majority. Smilios narrates the story through the eyes of individuals such as Edna Sutton. Born in 1901 in Georgia at a time when treatment of Blacks in the South was loathsome, she graduated nursing school but found no work until she responded to a recruitment notice from Sea View in 1929. Readers who can tolerate the author’s docudrama fictionalization will gnash their teeth at what follows. Always short-staffed, the hospital’s nurses worked exhausting 12-hour shifts. Therapy was drawn-out, gruesome, painful, and ineffective. Smilios digresses regularly to describe treatment of Black nurses as well as the efforts of researchers working on anti–TB drugs. Inevitably, many were tested at Sea View. Progress fighting both TB and racism was slow. However, by the 1950s, TB became curable, TB hospitals vanished, and nursing organizations dropped their all-white policies.

Vivid accounts of medical and racial progress with a mostly happy ending.