Meet Ruth Anderson Stephens

Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from Carolina Nursing, Summer 2000 – School of Nursing, originally published as “Changing the Face of the School of Nursing.”

In a photo taken on the day she graduated from the School of Nursing, Ruth smiles proudly. She is standing still, but one foot is placed carefully in front of the other, as if she might step out of the photograph at any moment. The tassel on her mortarboard flutters—she’s about to take off.

Like her picture, movement characterizes Ruth’s distinguished nursing career. Receiving her MSN at the SON was one of many stops along the way. The Jacksonville, Florida, native’s interest in nursing began just before she finished high school, when a special teacher wanted to make sure Ruth continued her education. “This teacher was a mentor to me without even really realizing it,” said Ruth. “She suggested that I go to Florida A&M University.” Ruth’s excellent grades convinced her teacher, Lucille Coleman, that Ruth would make an ideal nurse.

Ruth took Coleman’s advice, and in 1950 she enrolled at FAMU (which was then known as Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College), where she soon found another mentor in the dean of the nursing school. Elizabeth Carnegie’s talent for administration and the respect given to her by faculty impressed Ruth, who had a position in Carnegie’s office as a work-study student. Because of Dean Carnegie, Ruth decided that she wanted to teach.

After receiving her BSN in 1954, Ruth practiced for two years at Brewster Hospital in Jacksonville and then taught for six years in practical nursing and diploma programs. In 1957, she married Johnnie James Stephens. Soon after, she made the decision to return to school. “I was surrounded by role models who were black and who had made educational advancement, and I wanted to do so, too,” Ruth said. “And I wanted a school that was very good… I chose Chapel Hill.”

Ruth’s family supported her decision. In 1962 she entrusted the care of her two little girls to her parents and husband and left Jacksonville, Florida, to enter the master’s program in nursing education and administration at the SON. At a time in which the American South was struggling with issues of race and desegregation, Ruth left home, work, and family to come to a campus with few African American faces. However, her memories of the SON and UNC-Chapel Hill, though faded, are not what one might expect.

“I realized later that it was a turbulent time when racial problems were very prevalent,” Ruth said. “But I was insulated. What I remember most about Chapel Hill was my desire to do well because I had those children… and my mother, father and husband were back here [in Jacksonville] shouldering what I should have been doing.

“I remember the Old Well. And I remember the colorful trees, and I would walk to classes during the change of seasons, and they were the most beautiful colors that I can remember… I remember having to eat in the cafeteria, and when I ate in the cafeteria, I mostly ate alone. But I was more an introvert than an extrovert—I don’t remember any person trying to be unkind to me for being an African American during that time.”