'Voices of Katie B.'

This film is part of the Undying Yearning project.

In the movement piece Voices of Katie B., viewers hear graduates of the beloved Black nursing school in Winston-Salem, N.C. proclaiming love and appreciation for their institution, a powerful rumination of the service it provided to them and the community.

Working in the field of nursing is a "calling" similar to ministry, said Hilda B. Jolly, a 1966 graduate of Kate Bitting Reynolds Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. A calling, or yearning to serve, is the sentiment you get from alumni of the nursing school that closed in 1970. According to an article in the May, 1976 edition of the Journal of the National Medical Association, there was a time before "Katie B.," where "blacks were either cared for at home or not at all." That need, along with pressure from the Twin City Medical Society, a local Black physicians' organization, fueled the birth of Katie B. With assistance from William Neal Reynolds, Kate Bitting Reynolds, and the Duke Foundation, the 100-bed hospital opened in 1938, and for 32 years, the Black staff and students built and sustained the institution, ensuring its legacy.

Runtime: 4:11 Choreography: Anthony Otto Nelson, Jr.
Performance coordinator: Myra Weise, Proxemic Media
Video: Filmed and edited by Julia Wall Directors: Michael S. Williams, Anthony Otto Nelson, Jr., Myra Weise