History has shown us several outstanding black nurses who have paved the way for the strong nursing profession as it is today. I highlight several here.

Adah Belle Samuel Thoms 1870-1943

Adah Belle Samuel Thoms was born in Virginia in 1870 and moved to New York in the 1890s. She graduated from the Lincoln Hospital and Home School of Nursing, where she was named acting director one year later. She served in that position for 17 years, and because of racist policies, she was never officially named director.

During her lifetime, she fought for the rights of Black women to serve in the military, which led to the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She helped start the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. The organization was disbanded in 1950 when Thoms won the fight to integrate nurses into the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the U.S. Armed Forces.

Bernardine Lacey 1932-2021

Bernardine Lacey, Ed.D., graduated as the first Black student at Georgetown University in 1969 from the registered nurse to bachelor of science (RN-to-BSN) program. She was the founding dean of Western Michigan University School of Nursing in 1994 and served in that position for five years.

Lacey held leadership roles at several organizations and in 2014 was honored by the American Academy of Nursing as one of four Living Legends that year. Lacey was featured in “‘You Don’t Have Any Business Being This Good’: An Oral History Interview with Bernardine Lacey” published in the American Journal of Nursing in August 2020. The oral history included the mark that racism left on her and her professional growth in the many leadership roles she held. Lacey died on March 26, 2021.

Beverly Malone 1943-

Beverly Malone, Ph.D., is a healthcare leader, innovator, and champion for nurses. She is the CEO of the National League of Nursing and a past president of the American Nurses Association. Malone has been a vocal advocate for nurses to ensure culturally competent care for diverse patient populations. She has worked in education, administration, policy, and clinical practice in psychiatric nursing.

She also served as deputy assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her global achievements include being the first Black general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, the United Kingdom’s (UK) largest professional union of nurses. She served as a member of the U.K. delegation to the World Health Assembly and has the distinguished honor of having her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Malone is active on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ernest J. Grant 1954-

Ernest Grant, Ph.D., is an internationally known burn-care and fire-safety expert with over 30 years of nursing experience. He has been a prolific speaker and conducted many burn-care education courses for the U.S. military as they prepared for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing as a fellow in 2014 and is the first man to serve as president of the American Nurses Association. He also volunteered at Ground Zero after September 11, 2001, at the Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Grant lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and he actively posts on LinkedIn and Twitter. He was interviewed by the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission during Black History Month in 2021. Grant started his career as a licensed practical nurse at a local community college before advancing his nursing career and eventually graduating with his doctor of philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2015.

Stephan Davis 1969-

Stephan Davis, DNP, is a healthcare executive, leader, and educator. He has worked at hospitals, insurance companies, and is now the clinical assistant professor at Georgia State University. He teaches classes in leadership, policy, community health, and management. He is also on the board of directors for the Georgia Nurses Association and an inaugural member of the leadership committee of the American College of Healthcare Executives LGBTQ forum.

Davis earned his doctor of nursing practice at Yale School of Nursing and a master’s in health system administration from Georgetown University. He is board certified as an advanced nurse executive and has other national certifications in finance, education, and healthcare quality. Davis is active on LinkedIn and Twitter, where he identifies himself as the founder and principal of ILLUMINANT.

Sojourner Truth 1797-1883

Sojourner Truth was an African American abolitionist who lived from 1797-1883. She was born into enslavement in New York as one of 10 or 12 children. During enslavement, she was also a nurse. After being freed from enslavement, she worked for the National Freedman’s Relief Association in D.C. where she advocated on behalf of nursing education and formal training programs.

In 1849 she began public speaking, working hard for Black and women’s rights. In 1864 she met Abraham Lincoln at the White House. She was best known and remembered for her speech on racial inequalities delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.

Harriet Tubman, 1822-1913

Many of us are familiar with the name Harriet Tubman, a formerly enslaved woman who was instrumental in leading slaves to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Tubman served the Union Army during the Civil War, and while many of us are familiar with her story, her service as a nurse is often overlooked.

In 1862, Tubman served as a nurse in Beaufort, South Carolina, and was appointed matron of a hospital in Fort Monroe in Virginia where she cared for sick and wounded Black soldiers. Unfortunately, Tubman did not receive pay or pension as a nurse during the Civil War.

In the book “Harriet: The Moses of Her People,” author Sarah H. Bradford wrote this of Tubman: “She nursed our soldiers in the hospitals, and knew how, when they were dying by numbers of some malignant disease, with cunning skill to extract from roots and herbs, which grew near the source of the disease, the healing draught, which allayed the fever and restored numbers to health.”

Despite her service, Tubman was denied a nurse’s pension, even after the petitioning of then U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward. The only monetary acknowledgment she received for her service was through her widow’s pension based on her husband’s service in the Civil War, which was increased from $8 to $20 a month in consideration of her personal services to the country.

Estelle Massey Osborne, 1901-1981

Estelle Osborne attended nursing school in St. Louis at a time when only 14 of the 1,300 nursing schools in the country admitted Black students. During this time, the American Nursing Association refused membership to Black nurses. Osborne studied at St. Louis City Hospital, which later became known as the Homer G. Phillips Hospital. This hospital was the largest exclusively Black, city-operated general hospital in the world and at the time served more than 70,000 people.

Over the next few years, Osborne earned several accolades, including being the first Black nurse to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fund Scholarship and the first Black nurse to earn a master’s degree, receiving a Master of Arts from Columbia University Teachers College in New York City.

She then became a researcher for the Rosenwald Fund, where she studied rural life in the deep South, with a focus on ways to improve health education in rural Black communities. Following a five-year period as president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, Osborne returned to the Homer G. Phillips Hospital as its first Black superintendent of nurses, as well as the first Black female director of the hospital’s nursing school.

In 1943, to address a shortage of nurses both in the U.S. and overseas in the military, Congress enacted the Bolton Act, which appropriated $160 million in federal funding to nursing schools across the country. Osborne played a key role in ensuring funds from the Bolton Act benefited Black nurses. She would go on to serve in several prominent national leadership positions and helped pave the way for generations of Black nurses.

Mary Eliza Mahoney, 1845-1926

Mary Mahoney is the first Black nurse to graduate from nursing school and receive a professional nursing license in the U.S. Born in 1845 in Boston to freed slaves, she studied at Phillips School in her hometown, which in 1855, became one of the first integrated schools in the country.

As a teenager, Mahoney began working at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, where she worked for 15 years in a variety of roles, including as a nurse’s aide. In 1878, a 33-year-old Mahoney was admitted to the hospital’s nursing school. It was a demanding program and few who began their studies graduated, though in 1879, Mahoney completed the program and became the first African American in the country to earn a professional nursing license.

Following her training, she continued a 40-year-career in the profession. In 1896, she joined the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada, the precursor to the American Nurses Association. Upon her retirement, she continued to fight for women’s rights and was among the first women who registered to vote in Boston following the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

As we take just a glimpse into the lives of these distinguished leaders in nursing, it is important for us to recognize and reflect upon their important contributions.