Group portrait of attendees at the first convention of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, in Boston, Massachusetts. (1909) ****************** At the end of the 19th century, the status of black nurses was appalling. Throughout the United States they were denied adequate training. They were kept out of most hospital and private-duty nursing. When they found employment, they were paid significantly lower wages than white nurses. They were not allowed to serve as nurses in the armed forces. Their inferior status in the profession was reinforced by separate state board examinations and exclusion from nursing organizations. Worst of all, they had to stand by helplessly as their own people were denied health care that they themselves could have provided. On August 25, 1908, a group of fifty-two black graduate nurses met at St. Marks Methodist Church in New York City to try to change these conditions. The force behind the gathering was Martha Franklin from New Haven, Connecticut. She had recently surveyed hundreds of black nurses about their professional situations, and the results had made her decide that they must take matters into their own hands. Franklin was elected president of the organization at that first meeting, and the major issues were aired. When the women left, they had three goals: 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. They were also fiercely determined to improve health care for black patients. In the years that followed, the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) battled on all fronts. In 1909, the organization set out to destroy the practice of having separate state boards of nursing. One member, Ludie A. Andrews, instituted legal proceedings against the state of Georgia and fought for the next ten years for the right to sit for the same professional licensing examination as her white peers. In 1917, the organization created a national registry of black graduate nurses to help its members find employment, especially private-duty employment. In 1920, it began a campaign to improve black-operated nursing schools. In 1934, the NACGN established a national headquarters and hired a nurse executive secretary, Mabel Keaton Staupers. Two years later, three black schools of nursing were accredited by the New York State Board of Nurse Examiners. In the same year, a public health nursing program for graduate black nurses was established at St. Phillip Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. In the years that followed, the NACGN worked for legislation that would improve the lot of its members and the black community as a whole. In 1943, it supported an amendment to the Bolton Bill that would create the Cadet Nurse Corps, ensuring that black nursing students would be able to join the corps. By the wars end, more than 2,000 black students had participated. The organization also worked with the army, pressuring it to drop its restrictions against black nurses. As a result, more than 500 black nurses served in the army in World War II. The group was less successful in its dealings with the navy, in which only four black nurses served. The final obstacle to full participation in professional nursing was the American Nurses Association (ANA). By 1949, through the efforts of the NACGN, only nine states and the District of Columbia still barred black nurses from their local ANA chapters, and provisions had been made for individuals to bypass those chapters and join the ANA directly. On January 25, 1951, the board of directors of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, having decided that its job was done, voted itself out of existence. Image: Boston Historical Society Info: Black Women in America: Science, Health and Medicine by Darlene Clark Hine
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 16:36:02 +0000
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