© Lauren Justice / The Flint Journal'No black nurses' lawsuit: a second nurse in Flint, Mich. claimed she saw a note in the Hurley Medical Center's neonatal care unit that said African American nurses were not to assist a particular patient's baby. Here, Rev. Charles E. William II speaks to the press outside Hurley Feb. 19.
Where there is one, there is more.
Just days after
news spread of a nurse at a Flint, Mich. hospital who had filed a lawsuit claiming her employer granted a patient's request not to have African-American nurses treat his baby, a second nurse has corroborated the claim in another lawsuit.
The nurse, Carlotta Anderson, claims in her lawsuit that a notice was posted on the assignment clipboard in the neonatal unit of the Hurley Medical Center on Oct. 31 that said, "No African American nurse to take care of baby."
Anderson's lawyer, Tom Pabst, tells The Christian Science Monitor that the notice is unambiguous discrimination.
"There's no misunderstanding. They gave an instruction. No black hand touches a white baby," he says.
News of the first lawsuit, filed by Tonya Battle, spread, and Al Sharpton's National Action Network held a press conference Feb. 19 in front of Hurley Medical Center to protest the notice and demand accountability.
Comment: Indeed, the similarities are so striking that this brief but succinct summation barely even scratches the surface. Stay tuned for the next volume of the 'Secret History of the World' series, in which Laura Knight-Jadczyk will be taking a close look at the Fall of Rome.