Mary Eliza Mahoney

Yesterday I learned about Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first Black nurse in the United States. 

She was born in 1845 to parents who had been enslaved in North Carolina, but had managed to get to Massachusetts as free people. According to her Wikipedia page, which is based on multiple books and articles about her, Mahoney knew she wanted to be a nurse as a young person, but didn't get a chance to pursue studies until she was 33. That was officially too old for the program the New England Hospital for Women and Children, but possibly because she had worked there as a cook, maid and washerwoman since she was 18, she was admitted. 

She was one of only three in her class of 40 to finish the 16-month program, which required 16-hour days. (They sound absolutely grueling.) She graduated in 1879. 

From there, Mahoney worked as a private-duty nurse, generally for wealthy white families. In 1896 she was a founder of the organization that later became the American Nurses Association (ANA), and soon after the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN), because — big surprise — the other organization did not welcome African American nurses. 

By 1920, she was living in the Boston area and was either the first woman or one of the first women to register to vote after the 19th Amendment went into effect. She died in 1926.

The NACGN created a Mary Mahoney award in 1936; the ANA has given the award since the NACGN merged with the ANA in 1951. 

Mahoney is in the American Nurses Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame.

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Thanks to Christina Proenza Coles, author of American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World, for writing about Mahoney on Twitter.

This article from the Amsterdam News has some more details.

The photo is from the Wikimedia Commons, photographer unknown.