Dixie Three

Dixie Three. Contributing to the End of Jim Crow . On August 8, 1963, three Black nurses protested segregated staff areas at Hampton's Dixie Hospital. Mildred Smith, Patricia Taylor (McKenzie), and Agnes Stokes (Chisman) sat to eat lunch in the spacious whites-only hospital cafeteria rather than in the cramped basement classroom designated for non-white employees. The three women were fired by the hospital on the second day of their sit-in. , , The women filed a lawsuit against the hospital, claiming racial discrimination. Smith later said, like Rosa Parks, she "was tired of taking a back seat," and wanted to mount a stand against hospital employee segregation. Soon after terminating the three ladies' employment, the hospital ended its policy of cafeteria segregation, but refused to rehire the three women. , , In 1964, the U.S. District Court in Newport News dismissed the women's suit on grounds that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not apply retroactively to the nurse's protest a year earlier. However, in 1966, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the nurses' constitutional rights had been violated. The court ordered Dixie Hospital to reinstate the employment of the nurses and award them full back pay. The action of the "Dixie Three" was part of a larger Civil Rights movement that placed the nursing profession among the efforts that lead to the end of Jim Crow laws that legalized segregation in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland.