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"H" is for Hunter, Jane Edna Iris (1882-1971)

South Carolina From A to Z
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"H" is for Hunter, Jane Edna Iris (1882-1971). Nurse, social worker. Family circumstances forced Hunter to go into domestic service when barely in her teens. She was able to work her way through Ferguson Academy (now Ferguson-William College) and graduated in 1900. She was admitted to the Cannon Street Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1902. Her experience in the Charleston slums imbued Hunter with a powerful desire to help her fellow blacks escape such deplorable conditions. In 1905 she obtained a nursing degree from the Dixie Hospital and Training School at Hampton Institute in Virginia. She moved to Cleveland, Ohio where she opened the Phyllis Wheatley Home that housed young black women and trained them in various professions. In 1940 Jane Edna Iris Hunter published her autobiography, A Nickel and a Prayer.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.