Page 61: Excerpt from A Nickel and a Prayer
the name, “Legare Walker, Attorney-at-Law.” I said to myself, “Why, that is the name of the man into whose home I helped bring the most beautiful baby I have ever seen.” I stopped the car and climbed the stairs in that building--to find here, not the father, but a handsome son. He had not yet been born when I left Summerville twenty-nine years past; but he said his mother had often told him and his sister about me, their nurse. It was good to know that I was remembered for the service I had rendered.
You may be sure that in the early years of my nursing career I worked more zealously, and for longer hours than many a white nurse. Racial prejudice was an obstacle that could be overcome only by unusual devotion to duty and outstanding success. My prayer was not to lose a single case. I have said I was fortunate in my professional contacts to have had work with cultured people. This was no snobbish feeling, but a realization that my success in these situations would give me a prestige valuable to my career. Then, too, I was able to acquire some of the gentler ways which my earlier underprivileged years had denied me.
Work in the horrible slums of historic Charleston was no less a privilege than the experience in the homes of the well-to-do. In the Negro quarters of the city I saw conditions that were much worse than any I had known. They quickened my sympathies and re-
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Hunter, Jane Edna. A Nickel and a Prayer. 2nd edition. Nashville: Elli Kani Publishing Co., 1940.
the name, “Legare Walker, Attorney-at-Law.” I said to myself, “Why, that is the name of the man into whose home I helped bring the most beautiful baby I have ever seen.” I stopped the car and climbed the stairs in that building--to find here, not the father, but a handsome son. He had not yet been born when I left Summerville twenty-nine years past; but he said his mother had often told him and his sister about me, their nurse. It was good to know that I was remembered for the service I had rendered.
You may be sure that in the early years of my nursing career I worked more zealously, and for longer hours than many a white nurse. Racial prejudice was an obstacle that could be overcome only by unusual devotion to duty and outstanding success. My prayer was not to lose a single case. I have said I was fortunate in my professional contacts to have had work with cultured people. This was no snobbish feeling, but a realization that my success in these situations would give me a prestige valuable to my career. Then, too, I was able to acquire some of the gentler ways which my earlier underprivileged years had denied me.
Work in the horrible slums of historic Charleston was no less a privilege than the experience in the homes of the well-to-do. In the Negro quarters of the city I saw conditions that were much worse than any I had known. They quickened my sympathies and re-
(<<<previous) (next>>>)
Hunter, Jane Edna. A Nickel and a Prayer. 2nd edition. Nashville: Elli Kani Publishing Co., 1940.
© 2009 Jane Edna Hunter Project
