Healthcare Heroes
This morning we’re sharing an image from a beautiful photobook at Loyola University Archives & Special Collections titled Eudora Welty Photographs. Most people are familiar with Eudora Welty’s literary work, but many don’t realize she was first employed by the Works Progress Administration to photograph daily life in Mississippi and the Depression-era South.
This photograph, captioned “Nurse at home, Jackson, Miss”, features an African American woman standing before a residence dressed in a clean, pressed nurse’s uniform and hat. She also wears a fashionable long coat with fur trim details. Behind her, a hand-painted sign mounted to the exterior wall reads “Clara Humes, Obstetric Nurse and Nursing”. Welty focused her lens on a diversity of people and classes throughout this period, but her photographs of the emerging African-American middle class are incredibly powerful.
