Other sources list her date of birth as May 7, 1845. Chayer of Teacher’s College, Columbia University, an unverified report gave Mary Eliza Mahoney’s birth date as Apin Roxbury. Mary Eliza Mahoney Dialysis Center is a stop on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. House of Representatives resolution, US Congress, April 2006 H.CON.RES.386 Honoring Mary Eliza Mahoney, America’s first professionally trained African-American nurse. Mary Mahoney Lecture Series, Indiana University Northwest Other honors include: Mary Mahoney Memorial Health Center, Oklahoma City She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. Mahoney was inducted into the ANA’s Hall of Fame in 1976. Today, the Mary Mahoney Award is bestowed biennially by the ANA in recognition of significant contributions in advancing equal opportunities in nursing for members of non-European groups. And when she finally retired fully she continued to remain a champion for women’s rights. She was the director of the Howard Orphanage Asylum for black children in Long Island, NY from 1911-1912. When NACGN merged with the American Nurses Association in 1951, the award was continued. Mahoney would go on to work another 40 years in her profession, her impact and reach didn’t end there. In recognition of her outstanding example to nurses of all races, the NACGN established the Mary Mahoney Award in 1936. Her grave is located in Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts. She died in Boston on January 4, 1926, at the age of 80. In additon to her work as a nurse, Mahoney was a strong supporter of the women’s suffrage movement and became one of the first women in her city to register to vote in 1921, at the age of seventy-six. Mahoney moved to New York in 1911 to head the Howard Orphan Asylum for Black Children, in Kings Park, Long Island. The NACGN members gave Mahoney a lifetime membership in the association and a position as the organization’s chaplain. In her speech, she recognized the inequalities in her nursing education, and in nursing education of the day. In 1909, Mahoney spoke at the NACGN’s first annual convention. The association also strived to commemorate nurses on their accomplishments in the registered nursing field. The association didn’t discriminate against anyone and aimed to support and congratulate the accomplishments of all outstanding nurses, and to eliminate racial discrimination in the nursing community. In 1908 she became co-founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). In 1896, she became one of the original members of a predominantly whyte Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (NAAUSC), which later became the American Nurses Association (ANA). Patients tended by Mahoney throughout her career gave glowing testimony of her expertise and tender care. She inspired both nurses and patients with her calm, quiet efficiency and untiring compassion. After gaining her nursing diploma, Mahoney worked for many years as a private care nurse, earning a distinguished reputation. Thus she made history when she became the first Black woman to complete nurse’s training. Of the forty applicants in her class, only three remained to receive their diplomas, two whyte women and Mahoney. She was also required to attend lectures and educate herself by instruction of doctors in the ward, and to work for several months as a private-duty nurse. Mahoney’s training required she spend at least one year in the hospital’s various wards to gain universal nursing knowledge. In 1878, at age thirty-three, she was accepted in the hospital’s nursing school, the first professional nursing program in the country. At the age of 18, she decided to pursue a career in nursing, working at the progressive New England Hospital for Women and Children. Mahoney was the eldest of three children she attended the Phillips School, one of the first integrated schools in Boston. Her parents were originally from North Carolina, who moved north before the Civil War in pursuit of a life with less racial discrimination. Mary Eliza Mahoney was born on May 7, 1845, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. BY Meserette Kentake In 1879 Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first Black graduate nurse in the United States.
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