#MARY ELIZA MAHONEY FAMOUS QUOTE TRIAL#

#MARY ELIZA MAHONEY FAMOUS QUOTE TRIAL#

What started as a two-year trial ended up spanning almost three decades of service.Īs the first African American appointed as Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, Johnson-Brown commanded 7,000 male and female nurses in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves.

It was there that she honed her natural leadership abilities and decided to join the Army. Before all that, Johnson-Brown was a nursing student at Harlem Hospital School of Nursing, where she enrolled after being turned away from the West Chester School of Nursing.Īfter graduating in 1953, she worked at the Philadelphia Veteran’s Hospital. Hazel Johnson-Brown is not remembered first as a nurse (though she was one), but as the woman who made military history as the first African American female general in 1979. In 1908 she co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN), changing the path for many women who followed her. She soon became a well-known member of the Nurses Associated Alumnae (ANA) as one of the only women of color. Upon graduation, Mahoney served as a private duty nurse along the East Coast. Not only was she the the only African American, but there were only three other female graduates. In 1879 at age 34, she graduated from nursing school after 16 months in a tiny class of 40 people. She went on to earn a degree that would help leverage her career.

This quickly turned into 15 years that she served as an unofficial nurse’s assistant.

In order to make her case, she started volunteering time at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. She was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1845 and grew up wanting to be a nurse, even though the profession was still largely closed to women. Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first registered African American nurse.

Mary eliza mahoney famous quote