USS Red Rover hospital ship. National Library of Medicine.

Nurses Week is scheduled to correspond with the birth of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910).  We do this to honor her work in professionalizing and modernizing nursing. Her contribution to our profession is considerable, and it is right that we pay respect to her. But it is equally right that we put Nurse Nightingale in context so that Nurses Week can celebrate all nurses, and not just the often well-off white women on which most nursing history focuses. This four-part blog series during the month of May will honor a handful of women of color who accomplished remarkable things during Florence Nightingale’s lifetime.

Ann Bradford Stokes

Ann Bradford Stokes (1830-1903) was born into slavery on a Tennessee plantation. In 1863, she escaped and was taken aboard a Union hospital ship. She eventually became one of the first women to be listed as active duty personnel, and the one of the first Black women to serve as a nurse in the navy. Along with five other Black women who had escaped slavery (Alice Kennedy, Sarah Kinno, Ellen Campbell, Dennis Downs, and Betsy Young Fowler), she cared for about 3,000 patients on the hospital ship with infected wounds, burns, and dangerous diseases such as typhoid and cholera. The conditions were terrible—summer heat and humidity, flies and mosquitoes, poor sanitation and hygiene. Stokes was also the first American woman to apply for and to receive a military pension for her services. There are no extant photos of Stokes.

celebrated her government pension approval. New Albany Floyd – County Public Library

Lucy Higgs Nichols

Lucy Higgs Nichols (1838-1915) was born into slavery, escaping with her daughter to the 23rd Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, when she was in her early 20s. She arrived exhausted and bleeding from scratches and cuts. Her “owner” arrived at the camp to reclaim her, but the soldiers protected her by forming a wall around her. She stayed with the men, working as a nurse on the front lines while they fought 28 major Civil War battles.

Nichols studied under the regiment surgeon, learning how to care for war wounds, foraging for herbs, and making medicine. When Lucy’s five-year-old daughter died after the surrender of Vicksburg, the men provided an elaborate funeral.

After the regiment was discharged from service in 1865, many of the men encouraged her to settle in New Albany, Indiana. She continued to care for them, and they continued to look out for her. In 1892, 55 surviving members of the regiment petitioned Congress for the pension which had been denied her. An act of Congress was passed in 1898, finally granting approval of her pension. After her death in 1915, she was buried with military honors.

Susie King Taylor

Susie King Taylor/Library of Congress

Susie King Taylor (1848-1912) was born into slavery and spent the early years of her life on a Georgia plantation. At age 14, she escaped to Union-occupied St. Simon’s Island. Despite harsh laws prohibiting formal education, Taylor not only attended school and obtained literacy, but started a school for Black children and soldiers, becoming the first Black teacher in Georgia to openly teach reading and writing to people who were Black.

As one of the first Black army nurses, Taylor worked at battlefields, dressing wounds, including traumatic amputations, and treating Union troops suffering from infectious diseases. Through her work volunteering at battlefield hospitals, she met Clara Barton. She never stopped working from fear of exposure to any of epidemic.

Taylor narrowly survived a capsized transport ship in 1864. After the Civil War, Taylor worked with veterans and established three schools for freed slaves. During the years of Reconstruction, Black Codes, the 1896 passage of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan made her life dangerous and difficult. She wrote of the horrors she witnessed and the effect they had on her patriotism, as well as her nursing experience in battle camps. Her written accounts of her Civil War experiences helped bring to light the service of people who were Black to the Union Army. She joined the Woman’s Relief Corps, a national organization for female Civil War veterans and organized Corps 67. Despite her service during the war and her post-war dedication to veterans and their families, Taylor had been classified as a laundress, so never received pay or a pension for her service.

Edie Brous, JD, MPH, MS, RN, is a lawyer and nurse in New York City and Pennsylvania.