Mary Eliza Mahoney (May 7, 1845 – January 4, 1926) was the first African-American to study and work as a professionally trained nurse in the United States. In 1879, Mahoney was the first African American to graduate from an American school of nursing. In 1908, Martha Minerva Franklin and Adah B. Thoms, two of Mahoney's colleagues, met in New York City to found the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). Mahoney, Franklin, and Thoms worked to improve access to educational and nursing practices and to raise standards of living for African-American registered nurses. The NACGN played a foundational role in eliminating racial discrimination in the registered nursing profession. An increase in the acceptance of Black women into notable medical positions, as well as the integration of the NACGN with the American Nurses Association, prompted the dissolution of the organization in 1951. Mahoney received several honors and awards for her work. She was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1976 and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. Early life and education Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in 45 in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Mahoney parents were freed, formerly enslaved peoples from North Carolina who moved north before the American Civil War in pursuit of a life with less racial discrimination. Mahoney was the eldest child, with one of her siblings dying in early childhood. From a young age, Mahoney was a devout Baptist and churchgoer and attended the People's Baptist Church in Roxbury. At the age of ten, Mahoney was admitted into the Phillips School, one of the first integrated schools in Boston, where she studied from first to fourth grade. The Phillips School curriculum included teachings on values such as morality and humanity alongside general subjects like English, History, and Mathematics. This style of instruction is believed to have influenced Mahoney's early interest in nursing. Mahoney knew from a young age that she wanted to be a nurse, possibly due to seeing immediate emergence of nurses during the American Civil War. Black women in the nineteenth century faced systemic barriers to formal training and career opportunities as licensed nurses. Nursing schools in the American South rejected applications from African American women, whereas further North, though the opportunity was still severely limited, there was greater chance at acceptance into training and graduate programs. Mahoney was admitted into a sixteen-month program at the New England Hospital for