Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first black professional nurse in America, and an active organizer among African American nurses. She was born in Boston, on May 7, 1845, the oldest of three children.

In 1948, she became the first Black woman in the regular Army Nurse Corps. She later served in Vietnam with the Air Force.

Additionally, a handful, like Boylston, worked in American units of the British and French armies. The U.S. military rejected for overseas service nurses who were African Americans or immigrants ...

Colon, the first African American commissioned into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after it was desegregated in the 1940s, died ...