The Origins of Incivility in Nursing: How Reconstruction-Era Policies and Organizations Impacted Social Behavior within the Nursing Profession

Abstract

Historians and scholars from varied disciplines acknowledge the existence of race-based discriminatory policies at the turn of the 20th century. However, little attention has been given to how the Freedmen's Bureau and Black Codes in post-Civil War Reconstruction shaped and impacted social behavior within the nursing profession. This article sheds light on the origins of incivility in nursing by taking a closer look at how early Reconstruction-era policies, structures of hierarchy in the U.S. armed forces, and its nursing corps and in the Red Cross, impacted the profession. The argument is made that the tandem workings of these policies and organizations, which produced racially insensitive and discriminatory practices, primed and erected systems of structural racism that perpetuated incivility within the nursing profession.