Adah B. Thoms
Charter member of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses
Adah B. Thoms was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1870. She began her career as a teacher and later graduated from Lincoln Training School for Nurses in New York in 1905. She worked as an operating room nurse before being hired as assistant superintendent of the Lincoln Training School for Nurses. She remained in this role due to the racial discrimination that prevented her from advancing. In 1907 Thoms and Martha Minerva Franklin hosted a meeting with 52 other Black nurses to organize the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). At that time Black nurses were not allowed to be apart of the American Nurses Association and in some states were unable to apply to nursing school, register for a professional license after school, nor to work in the Red Cross or be hired in many clinics or hospitals with mostly white patients. The organization was officially founded in 1908, with Thoms serving as the first Treasurer. The goal of the NACGN was to develop leadership among Black nurses and advance professional opportunities. She served as president of the NACGN from 1916–1923.
During her presidency, Thoms advocated for Black nurses to be admitted into the American Red Cross, as this would be a path into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. In 1918 Frances Reed Elliott Davis would become the first Black nurse hired by the Red Cross, but it would not be until 1941 that the U.S. Army Nurse Corps enlisted Black nurses. She authored Pathfinders: A History of the Progress of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1929. Thoms leadership was recognized by many, and she was later appointed to serve on the Women’s Advisory Council on Veneral Disease of the U.S. Public Health Service. Adah B. Thoms was a pioneer for Black nurses. Her leadership and efforts toward professionalization contributed to the groundwork for Black nurses’ professional status in the field of nursing.
Sources
We sourced the above information from Virginia Nursing Hall of Fame and Oxford African American Studies Center. To read her book, use the link above on the Pathfinder title to locate it in a library near you.
Learn More
To learn more about inclusion in nursing and be part of the national discussion to address racism in nursing, check out and share the following resources:
Know Your History
- American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
- Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.
Examine Bias
- NurseManifest to attend live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism or to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare, an online course created by scientist Anu Gupta, to learn how bias is related to our brain’s neurobiology and can be mitigated with mindfulness.
Support & Advocate
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
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