The opening of the Hospital and Training School for Nurses creates a place for Black patients to go for respectful treatment and for Black physicians to practice with dignity. This hospital and school is founded in response to anti-Black policies that deny enrollment in Charleston's white-led health care organizations. Nurse superintendent Anna DeCosta Banks sees the opportunity for African-American nursing students to learn under better-resourced white physicians in private cases, and to preserve the role of African-American women as traditional caregivers so that the role does not "drift into the hands of white nurses."