But Mahoney continued to inspire the struggle for equality and inclusion after her death. Black women, and men, could not exercise their right to vote in many states for even longer than that. The profession of nursing did not racially integrate until the 1950s. When Mahoney became ill with breast cancer, she sought treatment at the same hospital where she had trained as a nurse. She led and inspired the organization’s work: "to advance the standards and best interests of trained nurses, to break down discrimination in the nursing profession, and to develop leadership within the ranks of black nurses." Mahoney hosted the NACGN’s first convention in Boston the following year. Conscious of the persistent racial segregation and other barriers against Black women in nursing, in 1908 Mahoney became a founding member of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Mahoney became one of the professional organization’s very few Black members in its early years. Her formal training also qualified her to join the fledgling American Nurses Association (created in 1896). The certificate from New England Hospital enabled her to earn a higher salary, and greater respect, as a private nurse. Mahoney graduated as a nurse in 1879, at the age of 34. She must have impressed the hospital with her potential because the administrators decided she had the “suitable acquirements and character” necessary for admission to the certificate program.įirst annual convention of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, Boston, 1909, New York Public Library Her tasks included cleaning, cooking, and other aspects of patient care like those performed by nurse’s aides today. When the hospital opened its nursing certificate program in 1872, Mahoney had already been working there for several years. The hospital’s Annual Report from 1867 noted that some of the mothers who gave birth there had been formerly enslaved. New England Hospital was unlike most nineteenth-century hospitals, North or South, in that it welcomed both Black and white patients. Mary Eliza Mahoney, born in the West End in 1845, completed her course of study at Boston’s New England Hospital for Women and Children. Her voter registration records her trailblazing occupation: “trained nurse.” Mahoney was not only part of the first generation of professional nurses in the United States, but the very first Black woman to graduate from a nursing program in the United States. At 76 years old, Mahoney had already waited a long time for the chance Though she had retired before 1920, Mahoney had supported herself throughout her life. Mary Eliza Mahoney registered to vote in Boston’s Ward 13 on August 18, 1920, the very same day that Tennessee ratified the women’s suffrage amendment to the U.S. The only public photograph of Mahoney dates to the 1880s, at the start of her illustrious career
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