Radcliffe Fellow Discusses Jim Crow-Era Institutions

Darlene Clark Hine, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, argued in a lecture yesterday afternoon that during the Jim Crow era black professionals created institutions and survival mechanisms that not only saved the black community, but also empowered it.

Hine’s lecture, entitled “Black Before ‘Brown’: Education, Health and Social Welfare Professionals in the South, 1930-1954,” discussed education and healthcare among southern black communities, using the specific case of a South Carolinian midwife to paint a portrait of the larger struggle of the period.

Hine introduced the purpose of her speech as a “study of power, empowerment and the generation of social movement” in the African American struggle for equal opportunity. In presenting her study of black survival, she focused on the life and career of Maude Callen, a nurse and midwife who served the community of Pineville, S.C., from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Hine said Callen’s battles with an inadequate healthcare system, segregation in impoverished schools and a predominantly white hierarchy of power exemplified the extraordinary circumstances black professionals faced before the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Callen, according to Hine, revolutionized healthcare and education by teaching other women about prenatal care, birth control, diseases and necessary inoculations for children.

Hine said that Callen, like many other black professionals, “saved lives and empowered women.”

“[Callen] inspired black midwives to internalize positive perceptions of their worth and gradually repudiate accusations of their ignorance,” said Hine.

Audience members said that they attended the speech because they wanted to know more about the subject.

Ellen Leopold ’66 said she attended yesterday’s lecture to “address [her] ignorance on the subject of healthcare and education in the South.”

Hine’s talk yesterday was the third speech in a lecture series sponsored by Radcliffe Dean Drew Gilpin Faust.

Hine has served as a Distinguished Professor of History at Michigan State University from 2003 to 2004 and president of the Southern Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and of the Southern Association for Women’s Historians. Upon finishing her fellowship this year at the Radcliffe Institute, she will join the faculty of Northwestern University as the Board of Trustees Professor.

Hine’s graduate assistant Marshanda Smith said Hine is a mentor who “[teaches] people about those who have not had a voice” and that “it is important not to forget those who have paved the way for others.”

“Professor Hine has an overwhelming influence on people,” said Smith, who has worked with the professor for nine years. “She makes you think a lot about issues that aren’t covered in mainstream history textbooks.”