Mary Mahoney Research Paper

Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts (Logan & Winston, 2007). This is in the time era of slavery, and the time era when blacks had to face discrimination every day of their lives. Gates and Higginbotham (2008) said Mahoney was the oldest, wisest, and most strong- willed of the three children her parents Charles Mahoney and Mary Jane Steward had. There is very little known about Mary Mahoney’s parents, “North Carolina natives and possibly former slaves at the time who migrated North prior to the civil war seeking a less racially discriminatory environment soon after their marriage”. (p.362) Despite all that was going on in the time of Mahoney’s existence she was a determined strong black woman.

The program also was a 4 months private duty in homes around the community as well as lectures and bedside instruction. After the program she went through, Mahoney was awarded a diploma as a Registered Nurse on August 1, 1879. She was 1 of 4 who were able to graduate the program. The course began with 42 entrants (“Mary Eliza Mahoney First Negro Nurse,1954). This marked Mary Mahoney as the first black nurse in the United States. Mahoney worked as a nurse for the next four decades. During her 40 year career, she attracted a number of private clients who were among the most prominent Boston families (Logan & Winston, 2007). Unlike, many of her colleagues she brought all types of patients in from dangerous communicable diseases to critically ill patients while often only getting six hours to sleep a day. Mary was such a polite, hardworking, and loyal nurse she was the only black registered nurse in the directory of the Boston Medical Library (Gates & Higginbotham, 2008). Logan and Winston (2007) said Mahoney devoted herself to be a nurse due to the rampant discrimination against black woman in public nursing at this time in