"Anna De Costa( September 2, 1869-November 29,1930)

Anna graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1891.She then attended the newly chartered Hampton Hospital and Training  School for Nurses,graduating in its fist class in 1893.She later recounted in letters to her mentors that the training she received at Hampton had shaped her whole life.Having received special funds to attend Hampton,she felt an obligation to work on behalf of the black community that had supported her.Returning to Charleston, Anna became head nurse of the Hospital and Training School for Nurses when it opened in 1896.Committed to meeting the health care needs of the black community,these institutions were also created in response to the denial of staff privileges to black physicians and the exclusion of black women from admission to the City Hospital Training School for Nurses.From 1903 to 1930 she worked as a nurse for the Ladies Benevolent Society (LBS),A Philanthropic organization of white society women,caring for the sick poor in their homes.The white women of Charleston hired Anna with some reluctance because she was black but quickly came to appreciate her skill,tender-heartiness,and tact.Knowing the feelings in Charleston between poor whites and blacks, she had reservations about entering the new field of visiting nursing.Her decision to proceed set a quiet precedent for better race relations against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South. The decision to hire her did not go unnoticed or unchallenged.The most severe condemnation was voiced by the White Nurses Association of Charleston.For many years the rehiring of Anna precipitated debate among the women and expression of their preference for a white nurse-if they could only find one willing to do the work.These early years were filled with tests of the allowable boundaries among the LBS,Anna efforts to meet the needs of the black community,and Charleston's peculiar definitions of race and class.she worked among people of both races,but initially her patients were what she described to one of her mentors as a poor and ignorant class of white people.The LBS had at least seventy-five years cared for black patients,it had done so in a carefully controlled fashion.Caring for an average of 250 patients annually,she cautiously constructed opportunities that allowed her further to extend LBS services to the black community.Predictably,her efforts proceeded quietly,but by 1910 the growing numbers of black patients and physicians served by the LBS documented her success.Despite the demands of her work with the LBS,she stayed actively involved with the hospital's patients remained the black community's most destitute citizens,and although supported by churches,businessmen,and the local women's clubs,the hospital was in constant financial crisis.Responding to this desperate need,Anna served as superintendent and training school following the death in 1911 Dr. Lucy Manetta Hughes Brown,the first superintendent and the only black female physician on staff when the training school was chartered.She retained this position for more than twenty years,often without pay,and at times used her personal funds to keep the hospital running.During her tenure she educated more than one hundred black women as nurses.Anna was intent on ensuring opportunities for black women in the newly emerging profession of nursing.Her work with the black hospital and training school,and the LBS,Anna quietly created an innovative matrix of care for the black community while she simultaneously accustomed the white community to the employment of black women nurses.She even negotiated paid nursing positions for some of her nurses in one of the city's white hospitals.Anna pursued her goal by supplying students as the LBS needed them. While the students provided the LBS with flexible,affordable solutions to the demands created by  fluctuating caseload,the money generated through the program provided the hospital with a dependable source of income essential for survival.Her visionary tactics also included bringing trained nurses from her alma mater to Charleston to serve as role models and to assist with nurse training.When she died Anna was honored for her untiring service to the community.Anna hoped that it would be said of her that "she has done what she could"and indeed it was.Her alma mater claimed no other Hampton graduate had a more vital influence upon making the community finer,happier,and healthier than she did.Equally gracious was the LBS one-hundredth anniversary tribute to Anna which declared that in Charleston,"all ages,races,classes called her blessed."