East Texas Daughter

Raised in poverty in Tyler, Texas, Helen Harris Green went on to become the first black woman admitted into a Dallas school of professional nursing, the first black nurse-manager of the Methodist Hospital of Dallas, the first black department director at Timberlawn Psychiatric Center, the first black president of the Texas Society of Healthcare Educators, the first black to be on the board of directors for the TSHE division of the Texas Hospital Association, and the first black chair of the board of directors of TSHE. In this moving and personal account, she details the battles she fought and insults she endured to reach her professional goals. Green was blessed with an educated mother who was determined to help her daughter rise beyond the poverty of her childhood and who emphasized that education was the key. Her mother, Willie Raye Harris, was the single greatest influence on Helen and the person most responsible for her success. Her father, less well educated, believed in ruling the family with an iron fist, and her brother ran away from home in rebellion. Willie Raye was able to keep her daughter at home despite the father’s harshness. The vivid description of her poor childhood in segregated East Texas is riveting, giving a clear picture of the place and the time. Married and a mother at an early age, Green never lost her ambition. She studied, in a segregated class, for her certificate as a licensed vocational nurse. While working as an LVN, she applied for admission to professional nursing schools and was consistently turned down for seven years. Finally, she was accepted into the Methodist Hospital of Dallas School of Nursing, where she was clearly an experiment. Green met encouragement and support from the dean and faculty and most of her classmates, but she also endured curiosity, scorn, and rudeness from some professional healthcare workers and some students. At graduation, she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Award for academic and clinical excellen