Dorothy S. Lipscomb

Zoom interview by Michael S. Williams

Image by Julia Wall

Class of 1968

Fulfilling a "divine calling" from childhood, Dorothy Lipscomb worked in the field of nursing for 43 years after graduating from Kate Bitting Reynolds Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. The South Carolina native originally applied to the Greenville Memorial Hospital School of Nursing but was turned away because of her race. "I hate that I didn't keep the letter," she said, referring to what was sent to her from the school. After looking for accredited schools in North Carolina, Lipscomb found Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in Durham and Kate Bitting. She chose the latter, in part, due to the cost of attending.

Attending "Katie B." was an "eye-opener" for her, she said, because she had never been around anything that was Black owned. "Anybody that worked there in that hospital was Black. We didn't have any whites." When she graduated, Lipscomb said she went to start her new job the next day. "We graduated on Sunday; Monday morning I had to be at Baptist Hospital for orientation," she said. For newly-minted nurses like Lipscomb, who decamped upon newly-desegregated facilities, racism from staff and patients was a fixture. When one patient used a racial epithet toward her, she knew "I couldn't say anything. Couldn't say a word. Couldn't say one word." Once patients realized she "knew what [she] was doing and good at it, [racial incidents] melted away," she said.

Even with those experiences, Lipscomb said her time at Katie B. prepared her for anything: "[It] was my school ... and it was second to none, you were prepared for the next step in life after you left there."