‘A story of triumph’: How work of the Black Angels helped lead to a cure for tuberculosis

Editor’s note: This story is part of an Advance/SILive.com Black History Month series that will delve into the significant contributions African Americans have made to the borough’s workforce, both historically and in the present day.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Breaking racial barriers, they risked their lives to care for those left to languish and die of incurable tuberculosis. But the day-to-day skill and care they provided New York City’s most stigmatized, isolated patients is what earned the Black Angels their name.

“The Black nurses gave me back my dignity, made me feel like a human being again,’’ Maime Blair, a Sea View Hospital tuberculosis patient, told Maria Smilios, author of a 2023 book on the nurses who cared for dying tuberculosis patients there between 1929 though the 1950s, when the rest of the city’s nursing population turned its back.

The work of the 300 Black nurses made life bearable for close to 2,000 terminal patients, as many of the nurses endured racism in a mostly segregated hospital system in a very isolated section of then-rural Staten Island.

Sea View Hospital opened in 1913 specifically to treat patients with tuberculosis, and at its peak saw nearly 2,000 patients (almost double the intended capacity).

The Black Angels meticulous assistance in clinical research made possible the eventual treatments and cure for the dreaded disease, which literally consumed people from the inside out and still remains a global health crisis in places like Africa, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific, where access to treatment is limited, according to the World Health Organization.

“They knew how to mitigate the pain of these people who were so sick, not because they had medication, but because they had done it so many times,’’ Smilios said. “They were just the best of the best.”

With the help of the Black Angels, from 1951 to 1952, Sea View Drs. Edward Robitzek and Irving Selikoff conducted clinical trials, and kept meticulous notes on the drug isoniazid, the first drug to treat tuberculosis, according to the Staten Island Museum in Livingston, where the exhibition “Taking Care: The Black Angels of Sea View Hospital” displays heirlooms on loan from the nurses themselves and their families.

Sensitivity made it possible

The nurses’ daily sensitivity made it possible, as they made individual lives bearable, said Smilios, whose book, “The Black Angels,’’ the Untold Story of the Nurses who Cured Tuberculosis,’’ published by Penguin Random House, dives into their lives and the ultimate value of their daily sacrifices.

“Had it not been for the work of the Black nurses, not of this would have been possible,‘’ she said.

Virginia Allen, 93, who started working at Sea View at age 16, now resides in senior housing on the very Sea View campus where her nursing career began. She and Curlene Jenings Bennett, of Mariners Harbor, are two of the few surviving Black Angel nurses.

Recently, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis presented Allen and Bennett with commemorative coins and formal copies of the Congressional Records she submitted on their behalf, along with recognizing them on the House floor, making them part of the Congressional Record.

The Congressional Record formally submits their legacy to the history books of the U.S. Congress.

Allen recalled a month of summer training with the former city Department of Hospitals, now NYC Health and Hospitals, and additional education at the Central School for Practical Nurses.

She said she was excited to begin her career — and get to work — when she first arrived at Sea View.

“I loved working with the children,’’ she said. Though some of the 30 children in each ward were weak with fevers, had poor appetites and night sweats, many showed no symptoms at all, she recalled. “Naturally, it was very, very sad.”

Bennett, a proud graduate of the Bellevue School of Nursing, also recalled the sadness of the children she treated.

The horrific disease is the world’s second-deadliest infectious disease (behind the coronavirus), according to Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Back at Sea View, a teenage Allen had no idea of the significance of her work in the battle against tuberculosis, she said.

“I was doing my job the best I could,” she said. “I enjoyed being a nurse. It was a wonderful experience.”

And the experience catapulted Allen into a 50-year career that would take her to the operating rooms of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and Staten Island University Hospital. She also worked in private practices and in a role as a business administrator for a local union, as well.

The work of Allen, Bennett and the other Black Angels, can’t be undersold, Smilios said. “Because of their labors … we gained a cure for tuberculosis,’’ she said. “Ultimately, it’s a story of triumph.”

Smilios, a native New Yorker who now resides in North Carolina, said their story shows us that there will always be people willing to rise to an occasion and care for others.

Hope in humanity

“It’s a story that gives us hope in humanity and really should inspire us to be better people,’’ she said.

Bennett, 88, was born in Tennessee, but came to Staten Island at age 4. She worked long, busy days at Sea View in 1957 and 1958, after the development of INH Streptomycin, a gooey antibiotic, which she vividly remembers giving to patients intravenously.

“It was like putting Elmer’s glue in their arms,’’ she said. “It was, indeed, heartbreaking.”

When treating even the sickest of the children, she said she tried to remain cheerful. “I preferred to give some hope,’’ she said.

The result of the development of such treatments was a halt to the growth of bacteria in the lungs and relief of patient symptoms.

“Patients, who months before had been condemned to spend their remaining years in hospital wards, were being discharged having been cured of infection,” according to the Staten Island Museum.

“Others whose active infection had prevented surgery to repair their damaged lungs were now eligible for the procedures,’’ according to the Black Angels exhibition, which continues through September 2025.

And though racism was part of her daily experience, Bennett said she received respect for being the only Black graduate of the Bellevue School of Nursing on the campus.

Kind, grateful patients

The patients, she said, were always kind and grateful, as she administered the medications developed in the years prior to her employment. “I got along with the patients probably better than I got along with my co-workers,” she recalled.

“Kindness made a difference,’’ she said. “They showed they were thankful. Yes, indeed.”

To this day, Allen said she attributes her longevity to a strong work ethic, developed in the early years at Sea View.

Also, keeping her mind active, supporting causes close to her heart — including the NAACP, The National Council of Negro Woman, Staten Island Section, The New York State Women, the Lambda Kappa Mu Sorority and the Frederick Douglas Memorial Park Conservancy — each of which she’s served through the years, often as historian, is her secret to a long, healthy life, she said.

The arts, she said, are also a passion of hers, and she frequents the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan.

But the work must continue, Allen said.

“We have to always keep diligent and engaged in the betterment of our communities,‘’ she said. ”Everyone. We have to work together … and work as a team.”