StoryCorps Griot: Murray Brown

From: StoryCorps
Series: StoryCorps
Length: 01:52

Murray Brown tells her friend Kerrie Cotten Williams about being a nursing student in a segregated hospital. Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: StoryCorps Griot: Murray Brown
From: StoryCorps

Brownm_small Grady Hospital in Atlanta was segregated until the mid-1960s. But there were times when blacks and whites found themselves sharing the same space. Murray Brown --a nursing student at Grady in the '50s --recounts some of her experiences at the StoryCorps Griot Booth in Atlanta. StoryCorps Griot is an initiative to record interviews between everyday African Americans across the United States. In West African tradition, the griot is a storyteller who preserves cultural identity and passes it on from generation to generation. The StoryCorps Griot booth is traveling from coast-to-coast collecting these interviews, which will be archived in the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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Piece Description

Grady Hospital in Atlanta was segregated until the mid-1960s. But there were times when blacks and whites found themselves sharing the same space. Murray Brown --a nursing student at Grady in the '50s --recounts some of her experiences at the StoryCorps Griot Booth in Atlanta. StoryCorps Griot is an initiative to record interviews between everyday African Americans across the United States. In West African tradition, the griot is a storyteller who preserves cultural identity and passes it on from generation to generation. The StoryCorps Griot booth is traveling from coast-to-coast collecting these interviews, which will be archived in the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Broadcast History

NPR's News and Notes 6/12/2007

Transcript

MB: I came to Grady in the September 1956 class. At that time, Grady was
a segregated hospital and a segregated school of nursing. We shared a
common instructor and a common classroom at different times. In 1958
they built the new Grady. It still was somewhat segregated. I had a
rotation through the operating room and was in the recovery room and
this white patient woke up and she looked and she saw a black nurse and
she said, "Well I'll be! If it ain't a little darky." And then one day
this white man woke up and he was in traction and he looked around and
all three of his roommates were black. Well, somewhere along the way he
had kept his pocket knife, and he managed to cut all the ropes of
traction on him. He crawled out of the bed and crawled up to the desk
and told them he wasn't staying in the room with them niggers. So even
though they might have been sick they didn't hesitate to c...
Read the full transcript

Intro and Outro

INTRO:

It's time now for StoryCorps Griot. Each Tuesday we bring you a story from this project that's recording Black Americans across the country. Grady Hospital in Atlanta was segregated until the mid 1960s. But there were times when blacks and whites found themselves sharing the same space. Murrary Brown was a nursing student at Grady in the 1950s and here she remembers those times. But first a warning: This piece contains language that will offend some listeners.

OUTRO:

That was Murray Brown at the StoryCorps Griot booth in Atlanta. Brown is now retired from her 42 year nursing career. All the Griot initiative recordings are archived at the Library of Congress. A copy of each interview will also go to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington. To find out how to record your interview, and to hear more from StoryCorps Griot go to NPR dot org slash News and Notes.