She decided to be a nurse at the age of eighteen.

She worked in the New England Hospital for Women and Children until she was accepted at the nursing school.

She was thirty-three years old.

She was a student of the first professional nursing school in the United States.

Out of her class of forty-two, she was one of only four who graduated from the sixteen-month course of study.

If that alone was not enough to distinguish Mary Eliza Mahoney, she was also the first black professional nurse in America.

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Mary Mahoney worked as a private duty nurse and her competent professionalism had patients from all over the country requesting her services. Nurses were often assigned household chores along with their nursing duties, but Ms. Mahoney made it clear that as a professional woman she would not be dining with the household help.

While Mary Mahoney was one of the first black nurses in the American Nurses Association, those who followed her were slow to be admitted to the ANA. Undaunted, she threw her support behind the formation of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. She became a lifetime member and served as the chaplain for the organization.

In 1949, the NACGN and the ANA combined to form one organization.

She knew that there were still racial equalities in nursing education and she demonstrated to have her alma mater, the New England Hospital admit more women of color.

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By 1911, Ms. Mahoney was the head of the Howard Orphan Asylum in New York, where she served for a year.

Given her determination and her drive for equal rights, it isn’t surprising to find out that she was a strong supporter of women’s suffrage. She was one of the first women in Boston to register to vote - at the age of 76.

Born in 1845, by 1923 Mary Mahoney learned she was suffering from breast cancer. She succumbed in 1926 and is buried in Everett, Massachusetts. An award in her honor was established in 1936 by the NACGN and continued after the merger with the ANA. In 1976, Mary Mahoney, RN inducted into the ANA Hall of Fame.

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Mary Mahoney paved the way for women of color in the nursing profession, and in doing so she elevated the status of the profession for all of us. Look around us at the diversity of our nursing workforce today! It is hard to imagine the barriers that fell due to the dedication, the professionalism and the sense of justice that Ms. Mahoney brought to the nursing profession.

We stand today on the foundation that our nursing forebears built with those very traits.

Nurses like Mary Mahoney, RN.

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References: (1) Community Hospital Anderson. (2007). Discovery: the quiet African American medical pioneers. Retrieved June 10, 2007, from http://www.communityanderson.com/diversity/african_american.asp; (2) Pbs. (2003). African American medical pioneers: Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845-1926). Retrieved June 10, 2007, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/partners/early/e_pioneers_mahoney.html