Public Health Nursing for Southern Blacks in the Depression Era

This dissertation explores the impact of race, class, and gender on rural healthcare in North Carolina and asserts that "place" is a critical unit of analysis when thinking about health care to African Americans. Historical methodology was used to examine the barriers to health care for blacks living in rural North Carolina in the 1920s and 1930s, the unique roles that black and white public health nurses played in delivering care to black families, and the influence of race, class and gender on the nurses’ abilities to deliver quality nursing care. Black and white nurses in rural North Carolina were effective in working within existing power structures by forming networks and collaborations among each other. The dissertation also provides a historical precedent to a new era of study by linking health care with its social determinants.