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18 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com July 27–September 7, 2020 PROFILES IN NURSING by Aaron Severson T his Boston-born nurse was a true pioneer: The first Black woman in the U.S. ever to earn a professional nursing degree. A Country Torn by Slavery When Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in 1845, slavery was still legally practiced in half the U.S. In states like North Carolina, where both of her parents had been enslaved, it was a serious crime to teach slaves to read and write, on the grounds that it had "a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection and rebellion." Mahoney and her younger siblings were born in Massachusetts, which had been a free state since the 1780s, but even there, widespread discrimination and segregation, official or otherwise, remained the norm. It wasn't until she was 10 years old that a new state law permitted Black children to attend school alongside their white peers. Mahoney took an interest in nursing as a teenager, but opportunities were scarce. Lay nursing paid poorly; there were as yet no formal training schools for nurses; and few institutions would hire people of color for any but the most menial work. A Hospital Staffed by Women In July 1862, Marie Zakrzewska, M.D., a German-Polish immigrant who had been a midwife in Berlin before earning her medical degree, established a new hospital in Boston: the New England Hospital for Women and Children. As its name implied, the hospital cared exclusively for female and pedi- atric patients. It was also operated and staffed entirely by women, providing sorely needed training and clinical practice opportunities for female physicians and surgeons. Not long after the hospital opened, Mahoney joined its support staff, work- ing as a custodian, janitor and cook. She was not a nurse or even a nurse's aide, although after she had worked in the hospital for some years and devel- oped working relationships with the doctors, she sometimes assisted the nurses with their work, and they came to trust her judgment. Ten Percent Graduation Rate In 1872, Zakrzewska decided the New England Hospital for Women and Children should establish a formal nurse training school, the first of its kind in the U.S. It was an intensive 16- month program involving both class- room study and practical experience, probably inspired at least in part by the rigorous midwife training Zakrzewska had completed in Berlin before becom- ing a physician. The new nursing school was nominal- ly open to Black and Jewish applicants, which many early nursing programs were not. However, the school's charter permitted only one Black student and one Jewish student per cohort. In 1878, at the age of 33, Mahoney became the program's first Black nurs- ing student. She graduated in August 1879, the first Black woman in the U.S. to become a trained nurse. Of the 42 students in her cohort, only three oth- ers graduated. Only five more Black nurses would graduate before the turn of the century. Nursing for $1.50/Day Although Mahoney was now among the best-trained, most qualified profession- al nurses in the nation, hospitals willing to hire Black nurses — whatever their qualifications — remained few and far between. However, the Massachusetts Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845–1926) America's first professionally trained Black nurse The new nursing school was nominally open to Black and Jewish applicants, but permitted only one Black student and one Jewish student per cohort. AGAINST ALL ODDS Mary Mahoney, who was not permitted to start school until the age of 10, graduated at the top of her nursing college class.