Red Cross Nursing (23298)

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Photo archive of 40 silver gelatin prints and 41 large photo negatives, each approximately 3 x 5 inches, Clearwater, Florida, 1951-1952. The images center on Red Cross women in uniform, nurses, civic officials, and local participants gathered in training rooms, meeting halls, offices, porches, clinic interiors, and outdoor demonstration spaces. Several photographs show rows of women seated or standing behind tables stacked with Red Cross portfolios marked by large crosses; others record first aid instruction with a body positioned on the floor before seated observers, a nurse holding a small child near a display table, and a formal group around a handshake presentation in front of American flags and Red Cross signage. Additional scenes show a child seated beneath a wall-hung cross during class activity, women sorting dolls, clothing, and relief goods at worktables, a nurse or intake worker writing beneath a visible "Blue Cross Subscribers" sign, a physicain or examiner inspecting a man's throat before shelves of medical supplies, and home-visit style interiors where a seated woman presents a doll while speaking with another woman on a couch. Group portraits of Red Cross women at banquet tables and posed staff views extend the archive from public instruction into the social organization of volunteer service. The surviving negative sleeves carry manuscript dates in 1951 and 1952 and repeated idenitifications including "Red Cross," "Red Cross class," and nurse-related subjects, preserving original working captions and sequence evidence from Fulmer's studio handling. Photo studio envelope captions date and locate many of the images, as well as some handwritten notes which identify individuals.

The American Red Cross nursing and home-nursing programs had long linked professional care with trained civilian volunteers, and in the postwar United States that model remained central to local health education and emergency readiness. These photos document both a national volunteer infrastructure mobilizing for the Korean conflict, and a small Gulf Coast city in the early phase of the demographic and commercial transformation that would reshape the lower South across the second half of the twentieth century.

(From seller's item description).

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