Katie S. King Collection

Details

Who's responsible?: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries (Repository)
How much has been digitized?: Only a part of this collection has been digitized.
What's in the full collection?: The collection contains a 2005 oral history transcript; photographs; military materials (facsimiles), 1944-1948; educational materials (facsimiles), 1947-1948, 1997; and religious materials (facsimiles), 1968-2005.
Full biography: Katie S. King (1923-2014), of Fayetteville, North Carolina, served in the Cadet Nurse Corps in the 1940s and, after more than twenty years in nursing, became a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in the 1980s. Katie Sawyer King was born on 9 October 1923 and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She was one of four children. King graduated from E.E. Smith High School in 1943 and then worked for a short time in the laundry at Fort Bragg." King entered the Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II and started training at Hampton Training School for Nurses in September 1944. She completed the program, which included a six-month program at St. Phillips's Nursing School in Richmond, Virginia, in September 1947. King returned to Fayetteville after the war, working at Highsmith Hospital and then Pittman Hospital, where she was the head nurse of the African American ward. King married George King on 6 September 1948, and they had three children, Cynthia, George III, and Michael. While George King was in the army, Katie King worked in a hospital in Germany from 1956 to 1957 and at McCain Tuberculosis Sanitorium in the early 1960s. She earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing education from the Tuskegee Institute in 1965. In the early 1980s, Katie King was called into the ministry at Hood's AME Zion Church in Fayetteville. She served as a preacher and evangelist for about twenty years, retiring in 2003. King died 13 December, 2014.
Topics: Women's History
Military
Branch of service: Cadet Nurse Corps
Conflict: World War II era (1940-1946)
Subject headings: World War, 1939-1945
Military nursing--United States--History
Contributing Institution: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries

: Katie King at McCain Sanitorium; Katie S. King poses behind a counter at McCain Sanatorium (now McCain Correctional Hospital), in 1962. She wears a white nurses' uniform and cap.

: Katie S. King and family; Katie S. King (far left) poses with her family at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1959. Clockwise from left: King, wearing a white nurses' uniform, cap, and navy blue cape; her daughter wearing a girl scout uniform; her eldest son wearing a boy scout uniform; her husband wearing a U.S. Army dress uniform; and her youngest son wearing a cowboy costume.

: Katie S. King at Tuskegee Institute; Photo of Katie S. King at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, where she was working towards a bachelor of science degree in nursing, in 1964. King wears a white nurses' uniform and cap and carries two brown leather bags.

: Katie S. King in Cadet Nurse Corps uniform; Katie S. King poses in a Cadet Nurse Corps white work uniform, nurses cap, and blue wool cape. The photo was taken after King received her nurses' cap after six months in the service in 1944.

: Katie S. King in Cadet Nurse Corps uniform; Katie S. King poses in her Cadet Nurse Corps olive-drab overcoat and beret with black gloves and brown purse, in 1944.

: Katie S. King in wedding dress at Fort Bragg, 1948; Katie S. King poses in her wedding dress and veil at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1948.

: Oral history interview with Katie King; Primarily documents Katie Sawyer King's her service in the Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II and her ministry in the AME Zion Church in the 1980s and 90s. King briefly discusses her early life, decision to be a nurse, and entering the Cadet Nurse Corps in 1944. She talks about attitudes toward the program and attending the Hampton Training School for Nurses and St. Phillip's Nursing School. Related topics include: entrance exams; uniforms; learning patient care; the daily schedule; dormitory life; food; the departments in which she worked, including obstetrics, the nursery, and surgery; social life and recreation, including going to the beach and dances; restrictions; having to go on leave when her mother died; and V-E Day. " King also describes her nursing career after completing her training, including discrimination in her job at Highsmith Hospital; working as a charge nurse in the army hospital in Augsburg, Germany, while her husband was stationed there in the mid-1950s; getting a bachelor of science in nursing from the Tuskegee Institute in the 1960s; and her other nursing positions. " King also briefly describes her calling in the ministry and her service in the AME Zion Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the 1980s. She explains her training and some of her responsibilities at the church. King also talks about her involvement in programs for African American alcoholics and other volunteer work.

: Portrait of Katie S. King; Portrait of Katie S. King taken while at Hampton Training School for Nurses, Dixie Hospital, circa 1944. King wears the Cadet Nurse Corps light olive-drab dress uniform with a cadet nurse patch on the left sleeve and beret.