On August 8, 1963, three Black nurses at Hampton's Dixie Hospital—Mildred Smith, Patricia Taylor (McKenzie), and Agnes Stokes (Chisman)—protested segregated staff areas by sitting down to eat lunch in the spacious whites-only hospital cafeteria instead of the cramped basement classroom designated for non-white employees. The hospital fired them on the second day of their sit-in, and the women sued, claiming racial discrimination. Smith later said that, like Rosa Parks, she was tired of taking a back seat and wanted to take a stand against hospital employee segregation. Soon after ending their employment, the hospital ended its cafeteria segregation policy but refused to rehire them. In 1964, the U.S. District Court in Newport News dismissed their case on the grounds that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not apply retroactively to the protest the year before. In 1966, however, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the nurses' constitutional rights had been violated and ordered Dixie Hospital to reinstate them with full back pay. Their action formed part of the larger Civil Rights movement that included the nursing profession in efforts that helped end Jim Crow laws legalizing segregation in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland.
