The Belize Black Cross Nurses organization was established in British Honduras in 1920 by Vivian Seay (the person Nurse Seay Street is named after) , who led the organization until her death in 1971. Dr. K. Simon, medical officer for the Cayo District, moved to Belize Town in 1921, and began instructing members of the UNIA in midwifery, to combat the high mortality rates for infants and mothers. He urged that members take instruction under Belize Town Public Hospital matron Lois M. Roberts (Matron Roberts Polyclinic named after her https://www.facebook.com/pages/Matron-Roberts-Polyclinic-2/220131941700219), an Englishwoman, in general hospital procedures and hygiene. As Roberts had been unable to secure sufficient nurses for her training program, she agreed to accept the Black Cross Nurses.By 1922, seventeen of the first training class of twenty nurses passed their exams and were awarded their nursing certificates. By 1923, there were twenty-four certified nurses, who were each assigned a territory in Belize Town to administer to the needs of the poor, as unpaid volunteers.
In the aftermath of the 1931 Belize hurricane, the Nurses helped in the Public Hospital and in relief camps. An annual event called the Baby Exhibition, was a competition to award healthy infants in various age categories and display proper parenting to the populace. It was a popular event which consolidated the public perception of the nurses as professionals, since they chose the contestants, and the approval of the government, since the colonial medical authorities determined the winners.They also conducted studies and research on the health of communities, as well as humanitarian projects like the 1934 Palace Unemployed Women’s Fund, aimed at providing groceries to unemployed mothers.
Seay, and thus the organization, were staunchly in opposition to universal suffrage. On the one hand, they sought Victorian morality as a means to improve society as a whole and were rigidly opposed to the baser habits of the lower classes while on the other, they expanded women’s spheres from within the confines of domesticity. For the first time, middle-class black women, who were trained as nurses, were publicly active and held positions of community leadership. The attempts to control others’ morality were not always appreciated and Seay’s political involvement and party politics became divisive points, which reflected on the nurses. In the attempt to maintain order, Seay’s policies excluded poor and working-class women, while at the same time strengthening middle-class Creole political worth.
Though the organization never came under government control, by 1952 the Black Cross Nurses had influenced the health policies of seven of the colonial governors of British Honduras. It was the most active and lasting black organization in the country, and though it lost momentum after Seay’s death was revitalized in the 1980s and continues to serve.
Source:revolvy