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Enslaved people were designated as “contraband” and could be seized and forced into military support roles. It was during the Civil War, when the Union Army occupied Jefferson City, Missouri, that Williams, born an enslaved person, first encountered Army life. Army and the only known woman to serve as a Buffalo soldier. In 1976, she was selected for the Nursing Hall of Fame and, 17 years later, became a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame.Ĭathay Williams was the first African American female enlistee in the U.S. She also worked to recruit other Black women to her profession. In 1908, she became co-founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Often, she was forced to push back against her clients’ inclination to see her not only as a nurse but as a household servant. Forty-two students entered the program in 1878, and Mahoney was one of only four who completed it.īecause of the discrimination she faced in public health facilities, Mahoney became a private traveling nurse, taking care of mostly wealthy white patients on the East Coast.
#MARY ELIZA MAHONEY FAMOUS QUOTE PROFESSIONAL#
Eventually, she was given a chance to perform the duties of a nurse’s aide.Īt 33, she was admitted into the hospital’s rigorous professional graduate school for nursing. She was a teenager when she went to work at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, Massachusetts, initially as a maid, then a cook, and then a washerwoman. Born in 1845, Mary Eliza Mahoney became America’s first Black licensed professional nurse.
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