But in 1952, as a resort destination on the rise, Myrtle Beach was looking for attention-getting ways to open up its beach season. Before that year the town had kicked off festivities with a beauty pageant. Then in ’52 Myrtle Beach decided to stage “Bathing Suit Day,” and the rules were simple: Wear a bathing suit, or go to jail.

Although the word “jail” is being used loosely—no one was actually doing hard time, as the photos from LIFE staff photographer Robert W. Kelley attest. And while the town had officially moved on from a beauty pageant, the event still managed to include a batallion of young women in swimsuits.

Here’s how LIFE described the workings of Bathing Suit Day in its June 23, 1952 issue:

“Everyone in town and every visitor would have to wear beach attire from 6 a.m. until noon under pain of fine or imprisonment in an impromptu stockade. Three businessmen served as judges, 32 town ladies acted as attire inspectors, and convict suits were borrowed from the superintendent of county prisoners—who himself was thrown in jail and made to wear one when he came to Myrtle Beach in ordinary garb to see whether the suits have arrived.”

The day went well, and the weekend also included a parade and contests on the beach. LIFE reported that $650 in fines were levied to those not in swimwear, with the proceeds going toward the construction of a new hospital, and that the 1952 vacation season at Myrtle Beach “had opened with the biggest attendance ever.”

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day’ in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Patrolman Charles Edmonson on duty during ‘bathing suit day’ at Myrtle Beach, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A violator of the “must wear a swimsuit” rules and a law-abiding dog left the impromptu jail set up during Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

One of the enforcement offices for Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men buried women in sand for a contest held on Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing suit day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing suit day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post When It Was “Swimsuit or Jail” at Myrtle Beach appeared first on LIFE.

The article in LIFE, titled simply “Nurse Midwife,” that chronicled Callen’s work and her unique role in her community is a companion piece, of sorts, to Smith’s 1948 essay, “Country Doctor.” Spending time with the two essays, one gets the sense that Maude Callen and Dr. Ernest Ceriani of Kremmling, Colorado while physically separated by thousands of miles, as well as by the even broader, thornier barrier of race – would not only understand one another, on an elemental level, but that each would recognize something utterly familiar in the other. Their lives and the landscapes they navigated might have been as different, in critical ways, as one can possibly imagine; but in the essentials, they were kindred spirits. They were healers.

Here, LIFE.com presents “Nurse Midwife” in its entirety, as well as images that Smith shot for the story but that were never published in LIFE.

The story in LIFE began this way, setting the stage for what one reader called, echoing the numerous awe-struck letters to the editor published in a later issue, “one of the greatest pieces of photojournalism I have seen in years”:

Some weeks ago in the South Carolina village of Pineville, in Berkeley County on the edge of Hell Hole Swamp, the time arrived for Alice Cooper to have a baby and she sent fr the midwife. At first it seemed that everything was all right, but soon the midwife noticed signs of trouble. Hastily she sent for a woman name Maude Callen to come and take over.

After Maude Callen arrived at 6 p.m., Alie Cooper’s labor grew more severe. It lasted through the night until dawn. But at the end she was safely delivered of a healthy son. The new midwife had succeeded in a situation where the fast-disappearing “granny” midwife of the South, armed with superstition and a pair of rusty scissors, might have killed both mother and child.

Maude Callen is a member of a unique group, the nurse midwife. Although there are perhaps 20,000 common midwives practicing, trained nurse midwives are rare. There are only nine in South Carolina, 300 in the nation. Their education includes the full course required of all registered nurses, training in public heath and at least six months’ classes in obstetrics.

Maude Callen has delivered countless babies in her career, but obstetrics is only part of her work… To those who think that a middle-aged Negro [sic] without a medical degree has no business meddling in affairs such as these, Dr. William Fishburne, director of the Berkeley County health department, has a ready answer. When he was asked whether he thought Maude Callen could be spared to do some teaching for the state board of health, he replied, “If you have to take her, I can only ask you to join me in prayer for the people left here.”

For W. Eugene Smith, work mattered. Throughout his legendary career, he sought out and chronicled the lives and the labor of people who knew their craft. Whether he was photographing a world figure like Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa or anonymous Welsh coal miners; a doctor in the Rockies or a midwife in South Carolina; Smith saw something noble in hard work, and something profoundly admirable in men and women who cared enough to do their work well.

But one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who ever appeared in LIFE’s pages whose humble and necessary work merited more admiration than that of the unforgettable, unbreakable nurse midwife of Smith’s 1951 photo essay. After the piece was published, LIFE subscribers from all over the country sent donations, large and small, to help Mrs. Callen in what one reader called “her magnificent endeavor.” Thousands of dollars poured in sometimes in pennies and nickels, sometimes more until, as LIFE later reported, she was overwhelmed by the response.

“Halfway through a recent day’s mail, [Mrs. Callen] said to her husband: ‘I’m too tired and happy to read more tonight. I just want to sit here and be thankful.'”

Eventually, more than $20,000 in donations helped to build a clinic in Pineville, where Mrs. Callen worked until her retirement in 1971.

In later years, Maude Callen was still (rightfully) being celebrated for her life’s work. She was honored with the Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award in 1984 for six decades of service to her community, and in 1989 the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) awarded her an honorary degree, while the MUSC College of Nursing created a scholarship in her name.

Maude Callen died in 1990 at the age of 91 in Pineville, South Carolina, where she had lived, and served, for seven decades.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Weary but watchful, Maude sat by as a mother dozed.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Waiting, a young mother leaned forlornly against the window, ignoring sympathy and looking for Maude’s Callen’s car.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frightened and sick, the nervous mother was helped by Phoebe Gadsden, the first midwife she called. Gadsen, a practicing midwife who attended Maude’s classes, had helped at several deliveries but felt that this one needed special attention and so decided to ask Maude to come and supervise.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Maude got ready in kitchen by lamplight.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In deep pain, the 17-year-old mother writhed, mumbling prayers while Mrs. Gadsden held her hand.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At 4 A.M., hard labor began for Alice Cooper.

W. Eugene SmithLife Pictures/Shutterstock

At 5:30 A.M. a few seconds after the delivery, Maude Callen held the healthy child as he filled his lungs and began to cry.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At 5:40 A.M., the long suffering over, the mother first saw her son. She had no name for him, but a week later she chose Harris Lee.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At 5:45 A.M., the mother’s aunt, Catherine Prileau, tried to soothe her so that she would go to sleep.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At 6:20 A.M., her work over at last, Callen quietly took the first nourishment that she has had for more than 27 hours.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Maude at 51 had a thoughtful, weary face that reflects the fury of her life. Orphaned at 7, she was brought up by an uncle in Florida, studied at the Georgia Infirmary in Savannah, and became a nurse at 21.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

After another delivery Maude departed at 4:30 a.m., leaving the case in charge of another midwife.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Healthy twins, who were delivered a day apart last year by Maude, received a quick once-over when she stopped in to see them and pump herself a drink of water. Only about 2 percent of her patients were white.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A tuberculosis case, 33-year-old Leon Snipe, sat morosely on a bed while Maude arranged with his sister for him to go to a state sanatorium.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An accident case was brought to Maude’s door one night. Annabelle Fuller was seriously cut in an auto accident and Maude had given her first aid. Now the girl returned to have her dressings changed.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This girl greeted Maude at her door.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New dresses for 9-year-old Carrie (right) and 8-year-old Mary Jane Covington were dropped off by Maude on her way to a patient.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Simple kindness overwhelmed an old man. Frank McCray had a headache one day in 1927, soon was paralyzed, and had been in this chair ever since. He broke down and wept when Maude stopped in.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Extra duty assumed by Maude included cashing of relief checks and dealing with storekeepers for several people who were mentally incompetent or, like this man, blind.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Store-bought-food donated by Maude fascinated youngsters.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

After a call she waded back to her car.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A dying baby suffering from acute enteritis was rushed to the hospital.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A transfusion was almost impossible because the fever’s dehydration had affected the baby’s arm veins, and the doctor had to try the neck. The baby died before he could get blood flowing.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. W. K. Fishburne, head of the Berkeley County health department, examined a patient brought to hospital by Maude.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Outside a clinic held in a school, a crowd waited to see Maude.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Maude Callen inspected a patient behind a bedsheet screen.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Maude made a delivery pad in patient’s home according to classroom method.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The incubator was made of box and whisky bottles full of warm water.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This crib was made of an old fruit crate propped near a cold stove.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Teaching a midwife class, Maude showed how to examine a baby for abnormalities. She conducted some 84 classes and helped coach about 12 new midwives each year.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

Nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pregnant woman, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A newborn delivered by nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

Nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nurse midwife Maude Callen (right), South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

Nurse Midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

A child being treated by nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

Nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post ‘Nurse Midwife’: W. Eugene Smith’s Chronicle of a Rural Hero appeared first on LIFE.

The series, titled The Background of Segregation, explored that emotionally and politically charged issue. For one  riveting segment of the monumental five-part series, “Voices of the White South,” LIFE dispatched the great photographer Margaret Bourke-White to Greenville, South Carolina, where she documented citizens from varying walks of life who unapologetically supported the legacy and the practice of open, legal segregation.

Here, in striking color photographs that, at times, convey an unsettling intimacy, Bourke-White’s work opens a window on an era that, for better and for worse, helped define 20th-century America. The “Voices of the White South” article, which won praise and awards when published, was extraordinary for, among other things, the utterly non-sensational methodology and tone of its reportage. While much of the national debate over desegregation was dominated in the mid-1950s by often (and often understandable) heated language and actions “Voices” was a measured take on the issue. Far from emphasizing its own pro-integrationist sensibility, LIFE allowed Southerners to discuss their own pro-segregationist views in their own words, at length and created a portrait of the South far more nuanced than the depiction usually found in the liberal “Yankee” press.

The article was not, in the end, an anti-segregationist screed, but instead an honest glimpse into the heart of a culture frightened of what the future might hold.

“Outside the South,” LIFE wrote, “the white Southerner who believes in segregation is sometimes pictured as a latter-day Simon Legree who now does with law what used to be done with a whip. If he no longer runs around wearing a bed sheet and setting fire to crosses, he doubtless belongs to a ‘Citizens Council,’ which Hodding Carter [then a prominent newspaper editor from Mississippi] has described as ‘the uptown Ku Klux Klan.’ There are Southerners who fit this picture, but there are many more who are thoughtful, pious gentlefolk and who are still in favor of segregation.”

LIFE’s Dick Stolley, who would go on to become the magazine’s managing editor and the founding Managing Editor of People, among many other roles, worked on the Background of Segregation series as an Atlanta-based correspondent for the magazine. He told LIFE.com that, considering how despised the magazine was across the South for its solidly pro-integration editorial stance, he was “astonished at the time, and I remain astonished today, that I was able to find five Southern whites who were willing to talk to LIFE about their reasons for so adamantly opposing integration.”

While the “Voices” article was striking not only for its powerful color photographs and the (largely) subdued tenor of its language—especially in light of the politically and emotionally explosive nature of the topic at hand—a few of the observations made in the piece, encountered six decades later, are beyond jarring. Some of them, in fact even when read with an awareness of the era in which they were written are nothing less than shocking to contemporary ears.

LIFE reminded its readers that ex-Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia was only one of countless prominent Southerners “who feel that segregation must be preserved.” Talmadge, LIFE wrote, believed that “to destroy segregation would be to destroy the South. . . .”

[His] viewpoint is traditional and has, in the eyes of many white Southerners, the honor that attaches to a great past. “God advocates segregation,” Governor Talmadge maintains. “There are five different races and God created them all different. He did not intend them to be mixed or He would not have separated or segregated them. Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent. They become easy prey to outside nations. And isn’t that just exactly what the Communists want to happen to the United States?” This is a viewpoint that has been expressed by generations of southern political leaders and remains widely accepted in the rural South today.

In the “Voices” article, a 38-year-old white sharecropper in North Carolina summed up his support of segregation and his views on his black neighbors and fellow farmers this way:

“We’re working to own our farm. We want to hurry up and get someplace. But they just don’t work. They just don’t care. All they’re looking for is the end of the week when the landlord will shoot ’em a little money. [T]hey take a bath once a month, and their fields don’t look like they’s hardly tending them.” At the same time, according to LIFE, the sharecropper’s approval of segregation was “based as much, or more, on personal pride than notions of color. He would rather have a Negro living next door than he would a white ‘redneck’ or ‘peckerwood.’ In his view, ‘there’s nothing sorrier than a sorry white man.'”

The white sharecropper’s wife, LIFE wrote, “also approves of segregation and will not let her 9-year-old daughter play with an 8-year-old Negro neighbor. This is the reason she gives: ‘If our landlord came down here and saw her playing with a colored boy, he wouldn’t respect us. Only poor class whites do that. We’re trying to keep our self-respect and keep the highest level socially we can. We’re willing to work with the Negroes, but that’s as far as we’ll go.”

Another quote from the article that shares the sentiment and even the vocabulary of pronouncements that for decades have sent chills through men and women involved in the struggle for justice and equal rights came from Greenville’s white mayor, Kenneth Cass. “There is no race trouble here,” he told LIFE, “and there won’t be, unless an agitator comes in and stirs it up.”

One man quoted at some length in the “Voices” article was Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. “‘There are those who insist that segregation protects the ‘integrity’ of both races,” McGill said. “There are others who believe, with deep sincerity, that Negroes are ‘better off’ under it. Conceivably this might be argued with some logic. It does not matter. The world . . . has moved on. Segregation by law no longer fits today’s world…. Segregation is on its way out, and he who tries to tell the people otherwise does them a great disservice. The problem of the future is how to live with the change.'”
_________________________________________________________________________

—Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

An African-American maid prepared a white family’s supper in Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children played in a segregated neighborhood, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young girls listened attentively in a sewing class, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Home inspection in a black neighborhood, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Generations passed the time on a porch in Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mayor Kenneth Cass conversed with a Greenville resident, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Greenville, South Carolina’s mayor Kenneth Cass (in tie) visited a car wash, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Outside a roadhouse, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two black men were arrested for disorderly conduct in Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Three women stood before a magistrate after a disturbance at a juke joint, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A work crew comprised of inmates, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Inmates dug a drainage ditch in Greenville. The girl in the foreground lived nearby and came out to watch when she saw the gang start to work.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Greenville mayor Kenneth Cass reviewed a map of proposed roads in an upper-income housing development, 1956. The development was privately built by African Americans, and the city fully cooperated with their plans.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Segregated playground, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Segregated playground, Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Segregated playground, Greenville, 1956.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A night out at a juke joint in Greenville, South Carolina.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A night out at a Greenville juke joint.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dancing in Greenville.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A night out at a Greenville juke joint.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Civil Rights: Segregation in South Carolina, 1956 appeared first on LIFE.