As an 1879 graduate of the New England Hospital for Women and Children’s Nursing School, Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845-1926) became the first professionally trained African American nurse in the United States. She attended the Phillips School, the first integrated school in Boston, at 10 years old. She lived her entire life as both a civil rights and suffrage activist and became one of the first women in Massachusetts to vote in 1920. Mahoney was inducted into the American Nurses Association’s Hall of Fame in 1976 and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993.
