The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

Written by Maria Smilios

Narrated by Gina Daniels

New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nurse shortage. So begins the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure one of the world’s deadliest plagues: tuberculosis.

During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility, dubbed “the pest house” where “no one left alive.” 

Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this story follows the intrepid young women, the “Black Angels,” who, for twenty years, risked their lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city’s poorest—1,800 souls languishing in wards, waiting to die or become “guinea pigs” for experimental (often deadly) drugs. Yet despite their major role in desegregating the NYC hospital system—and regardless of their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculosis at Sea View—these nurses were completely erased from history. The Black Angels recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival.


Photo of nurses courtesy of NYCHHC/SeaView Archives   

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593787502

Maria Smilios

A New York City native, Maria Smilios has a Masters of Arts from Boston University in Religion & Literature. Smilios was a science-book editor when she discovered the Black Angels and was invited to tell this little-known story by one of the surviving nurses. Maria currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina. This is her first book.

Reviews for The Black Angels

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the early to mid-20th century, Staten Island’s Seaview Hospital treated tuberculosis patients at a time when there wasn’t an effective cure. The nurses at the facility were mostly African American, and they were referred to by their patients as the “Black Angels.” Smilies relied on interviews with the families of the “Black Angels” and with the few surviving nurses to tell the history of Seaview Hospital from their perspective. Many of the nurses came from the Jim Crow South, looking for better opportunities in New York, only to be faced with the same kind of racism they thought they were leaving behind. These nurses were at the right place at the right time to take part in the clinical trials of the drugs that finally made a difference in the tuberculosis public health crisis.

This is an important story and one worth reading. However, it needed better editing. It’s padded with so much trivial social and cultural history references to popular music, television, current events, etc., that I became increasingly annoyed because it took so long to get to the point of the book. Unless authors are paid by the page, there is no reason for wasting so much of the reader’s time.

[janarose1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At a time when tuberculosis was a long death sentence, New York created Sea View, a sanatorium on Staten Island. During the great depression, a nursing shortage forced hospitals and medical practices to open up the field to black nurses. At Sea View, the wards were filled with the Black Angels - the only nurses who would work in the dangerous sanatorium. This book follows several black nurses and their patients as potential cures were tested and discarded.

I could not put this book down. It was engaging and well written. The nurses and patients described throughout were fully developed and extremely relatable. Each of the nurses was an unsung hero who deserves recognition and accolades. Overall, 5 out of 5 stars.

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

contagion, bias, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, medical-history, medical-perspective, medical-treatment, tuberculosis*****

This is an amazing exploration of the 20th century history of tuberculosis and the Black women who worked under horrible conditions to make it possible for new developments in treatment.
My MIL spent a year in a TB sanitorium in the 1920s but lived long and prospered. I have been an RN since 1968 and have seen the nonrespiratory TB, in the 1990s/2000s (while I was working in jails) TB was a scourge in the Soviet union. But I was clueless about the history encapsulated in this very necessary book.
I requested and received an EARC from PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons via NetGalley. Thank you!