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Title
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Thereasea Delerine Elder oral history interview 1, 1993 June 25
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Interviewee
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Elder, Thereasea D. Clark (Thereasea Delerine Clark), 1927-
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Interviewer
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Greeson, Jennifer
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Place of Publication
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Charlotte, North Carolina
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Publisher
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J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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Date of Interview
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1993-06-25
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Physical Description
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1 audio file (2:03:14) : digital, MP3 + 1 transcript (36 pages : PDF)
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Object Type
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sound recording-nonmusical
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Genre
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spoken word
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Language
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eng
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Interviewee Biography
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Thereasea Elder was a 65-year-old woman at the time of interview. She was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1927. She was educated at Johnson C. Smith University, Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing (Durham, North Carolina), Livingstone College, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was employed as a nurse.
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Abstract
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Thereasea Elder recounts her life and career as a public health nurse in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before going into public health, Mrs. Elder was a nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital, the region's only hospital for African Americans. She discusses working at the hospital and how her job differed from that of white nurses at the segregated Charlotte Memorial Hospital. She explains that she left Good Samaritan to work in public health because she had seen what the lack of preventive services and education could do. Mrs. Elder joined the Mecklenburg County Health Department in 1962, and she discusses her experience as one of two African American nurses who integrated the public health nursing service. She also explains how the department's approach to public health nursing evolved over the years. She describes her health consulting and volunteer work with organizations including hospice, the Cancer Prevention Coalition, Energy Committed to Offenders, and the Greenville Community Historical Society. Mrs. Elder discusses growing up in the Greenville neighborhood and the negative effects the Southern Asbestos Company Mills had on the health of her family and the community. She also discusses how the African American community's perception of hospitals and the medical profession changed over time from the 1930s to the 1950s. Mrs. Elder concludes by discussing the growing problem of teen pregnancy at the time of the interview and the challenges women faced before abortion was legal and birth control was easily obtainable.
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Digital Object Notes
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MP3 access copy created on ingest from WAV preservation master. Interview originally recorded on analog audio cassette and digitized using a Digidesign 003 rack.
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Interviewee Occupations
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Nurses
Public health nurses
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Subjects--Names
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Elder, Thereasea D. Clark (Thereasea Delerine Clark), 1927-
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Subjects--Organizations
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Mecklenburg County (N.C.). Health Department
Good Samaritan Hospital (Charlotte, N.C.)
Chi Eta Phi Sorority
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Subjects--Topics
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African American nurses
Public health nursing
Health attitudes
Health and race
Discrimination in medical care
Teenage pregnancy
Children--Health and hygiene
Pollution--Health aspects
Voluntarism
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Subjects--Geographic
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North Carolina--Charlotte
North Carolina--Charlotte--Greenville
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Subjects--Genre
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Interviews
Oral histories
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Coverage--Dates
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1930-2000
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Digital Collection Title
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Levine Museum of the New South
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Digital Collection Series Title
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Professional Women
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Digital Project Title
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Living Charlotte : the postwar development of a New South city
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Rights
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The materials included on this web site are freely available for private study, scholarship or non-commercial research under the fair use provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, United States Code). Any use beyond the provisions of fair use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly publication, broadcast, redistribution or mounting on another web site always require prior written permission and may also be subject to additional restrictions and fees. UNC Charlotte does not hold literary rights to all materials in its collections and the researcher is responsible for securing those rights when needed. Copyright information for specific collections is available upon request.
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Grant Information
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Digitization made possible by funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.
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Internet Media Type
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audio/mpeg
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Related Interviews
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Thereasea Delerine Elder oral history interview 2, 2001 May 9, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (https://goldmine.uncc.edu/islandora/object/uncc%3A115); Thereasea Delerine Elder oral history interview 3, 2004 March 7, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Thereasea Delerine Elder oral history interview 4, 2004 March 19, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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Related Materials
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Thereasea D. Elder papers, circa 1930-2014, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (https://findingaids.uncc.edu/repositories/4/resources/589)
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Identifier
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MU-EL0043