Growing up, Virginia Allen admired her maternal aunt Edna Sutton Ballard and loved to see her nurse’s uniform. It was starched white with shiny white shoes, Allen recalled. Ballard spoke of her patients and coworkers at Staten Island’s Sea View Hospital on family visits to Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s. Those stories planted the seeds for Allen who later became a nurse.

Both women went on to make history as part of a group of 300 nurses who later became known as “Black Angels.”
 
Below, Allen, who has been a volunteer at the Schomburg Center since 2010, looks back at her 10 years at Sea View and shares a glimpse of her life at the hospital.
 
The nurses “gave so much of themselves to the cure of tuberculosis,” Allen said. “Some of them, actually, risking their lives.” Allen and fellow nurses wore protective gear such as face masks, gowns over their uniforms, and gloves as part of the safety protocol of caring for the patients who contracted the highly contagious airborne disease.

“I was fortunate to have so many professional Black nurses teaching in the education department and teaching isolation techniques, which saved my life,” she added “If I did not maintain isolation techniques, I could have easily contracted tuberculosis.” Allen never did.  
 
White nurses walked off the job in 1929, saying that caring for tuberculosis patients was too dangerous. According to Allen, the shortage created job opportunities for Black women. People were recruited from the South, the Caribbean, and Asian countries to fill the void. Some of the staff were also graduates of the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing and the Lincoln School for Nurses.
 
“Even though the Department of Hospitals had over 20 hospitals in New York, only four of them hired Black nurses at that time,” Allen said. “They had to work in other occupations because there were no jobs available to them because of segregation.”
 
Patients at Sea View were from all races, backgrounds, and ages.
 
“It wasn’t until many years later the term ‘Black Angels’ was assigned to the nurses,” Allen said. The patients called the nurses their “angels.” The nurses who cared for them were predominately Black. The nurses worked across Sea View’s eight pavilions. Her aunt, Edna Sutton Ballard, was a recovery nurse with patients post surgery and worked on the fifth floor of the children’s building.

“There were only a few Caucasian supervisors,” the Staten Islander added. “They rarely visited the units. They had almost no contact with patients. They worked in the front office.”
 
Allen began working at Sea View in 1947 at age 16. She convinced her parents to let her leave Detroit after graduating from high school, live with her aunt, and work as a nurse’s aide. Allen did not realize the historic nature of her job at the time.
 
“My age did not allow me to think critically about the situation at hand,” she said. “I treated the patients the way I was taught to treat them. I was young myself, so I related to them.”
 
Allen worked in the children’s building on the first floor. She cared for the babies, assisted toddlers and older children with their meals, and read to patients. She also accompanied them on visits to their occupational and physical therapy sessions. The five-story building housed a school, where teachers conducted classes and a library where children could select and borrow books. “It was more like a home setting—except that they were being cared for,” she said.
 
The Staten Islander recalled a seven-year-old patient named Willie who charmed all of the nurses in the children’s building. Diagnosed with tuberculosis of the spine, the boy wore a body cast, covering his upper body to just above his knees. Doctors thought he would heal faster if they could limit his movements.
 
“He was always cheerful, and funny, and he knew how to tug at your heartstrings, and get your attention, and he was always dropping things (such as his toys) on the floor,” the Black Angel recalled. “So naturally, you were always going over and getting things from the floor to attend to him and to pick up whatever he dropped. He knew how to get us in. All the nurses loved him. All the staff loved him.”
 
Her co-workers became part of her extended family, Allen said. On days off, they attended Brooklyn Dodgers games and went to dances at The Savoy and Renaissance ballrooms in Harlem. The nurses, who were from different states, formed clubs to raise money for educational opportunities for their communities.

Allen enrolled in nursing school at Central School for Practical Nurses in 1954 through a work-study program and graduated with honors in 1956. She left Sea View in 1957 and returned to school to take classes and pursue a career in labor relations. She advocated for members in unions Local 144, the Nursing Homes, and 1199 Healthcare workers of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Allen returned to patient care in the 1980s, working at Staten Island University Hospital until 1995. Then, she moved into a private doctor’s OB/GYN care and retired in 2005.

In 2010, Allen joined the Schomburg Center as a volunteer.

During the closing of the Center’s building in 2020 as a safety precaution to help stop the spread of COVID-19, Allen limited her volunteering activities to those in her borough.

She is a founding member and has been active with the Staten Island section of the National Council of Negro Women since 1968. She also serves on the board of organizations such as Cultural Crossroads in Fort Greene, the Staten Island Ballet, Frederick Douglass Memorial Park Inc., Art Lab at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island OutLOUD, and the College of Staten Island Auxiliary Board providing grants for education and vocation. She’s also a member of Lambda Kappa Mu Sorority, Inc, Lambda Chapter S.I. NY, and Literary Society New York.

Last year, Sea View unveiled the mural, “The Spirit of Sea View,” by Yana Dimitrova. One of the panels pays tribute to the Black Angels. The New York State Nurses Association recognized Allen for her lifetime of advocacy and her nursing career. Also, the College of Staten Island awarded Allen an honorary doctorate degree in Arts and Letters.
 
As the number of positive cases caused by the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 continue to decline and the weather gets better, Allen is planning to return to the Schomburg Center in the spring.

Allen, 90-years-of-age, has come full circle. She currently lives on the grounds of Sea View, which is known today as  Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Center and Home. The residential hall for nurses is now a housing complex for senior citizens.
 
And, the Staten Island resident kept up her nursing license. “I’m still very active,” Allen said. “I could actually still work if I wanted to. There’s nothing wrong with my thinking capacity. There was no reason why I should let it lapse.”

Collections at the Schomburg Center on Black Nurses

If Virginia Allen has inspired you to learn more about the history and legacy of Black nurses, here are materials to explore in person and online.

Schedule a Research Appointment
The Lincoln School for Nurses
Because of segregation, Black people were not accepted to nursing schools. The Lincoln School for Nurses, a privately endowed institution, was founded in 1898 in the Bronx to train Black women. It was the first of its kind in the U.S.

The Schomburg Center’s Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division has the school’s newspapers, yearbooks, and annual reports. Some of the courageous nurses at Seaview—and colleagues of Virginia Allen— were alumni of the school.
 
Harlem Hospital School of Nursing
During her time at Sea View, Allen also worked with nurses who graduated from Harlem Hospital School of Nursing. The Center’s Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division holds a comprehensive history of the hospital from 1923-1973 on microfilm. The division also holds books such as Early Black American Leaders in Nursing: Architects for Integration and Equality by Althea T. Davis and Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 by Darlene Clark Hine. 
 
Alma John Papers
Alma John was a radio talk show producer, registered nurse, and newspaper columnist. She was also the first African-American female director of a school of practical nursing in New York State. As the Executive Director of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, she hosted and wrote the scripts for the radio program, Brown Women in White.

“She was fantastic,”  Allen recalled. She had “one of those programs that you couldn’t wait to listen to.”

The Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division holds John's radio scripts, typescripts, and news clipping of her columns and more.

Explore Online:
Lincoln School for Nurses Photograph Collection
The digital collections of the Center’s Photographs and Prints Division has pictures from the Lincoln School for Nurses. Spanning the mid-1800s to the 1930s, the images consist of graduations, student gatherings, and individual portraits.

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