Publications

"Piedmont Tuberculosis Sanatorium (Burkeville, Virginia, 1918–1967)," by E. Thomas Ewing, Kiana Wilkerson, and Katherine Randall, African American Historical Genealogical Society News, August / September 2021, pp. 5-8.

This article introduced the project on Piedmont Tuberculosis Sanatorium through the stories of two intersecting lives: Rachel Hanna Price, a schoolteacher who entered Piedmont for treatment and died in September 1942 at the facility, and Thelma Brown Williams, who graduated from the nurse training program in June 1942, entered the US Army early in the second world war, and retired as a major after twenty years of service. The article concludes with an interpretation of the meaning of these lives in the historical context of Piedmont Sanatorium and segregated Virginia: "These two women’s lives spanned the twentieth century, from Rachel Price’s birth in 1900 to Thelma Brown Williams’s death in 2004. Piedmont sanatorium, where Price died and Williams graduated, was a segregated facility created by the state to treat only African American patients.... Telling the story of Piedmont through the lives of patients and nurses thus also tells the story of the important transition from segregation to civil rights to integration over many decades."

The article is available here to members of the AAHGS. For a copy, please contact project director Tom Ewing (etewing@vt.edu)