Mary Elizabeth Carnegie
Author, dean, researcher, editor, and first Black nurse on the Florida State Nurses Association Board
Mary Elizabeth Carnegie was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1916. Despite the barriers that characterized this period for Black nurses, she was able to graduate from Lincoln School for Nurses, receive a Bachelor’s from now West Virginia State College, a Master’s Degree from Syracuse University, and Doctor of Public Administration from New York University. In 1943 she established the baccalaureate nursing program at Hampton University and went on to become the Dean of Florida A & M University School of Nursing from 1945 to 1953. As Black nurses had no voting rights and limited participation in the Florida State Nurses Association (FSNA), she joined the Florida Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1945 and served as president before being granted full voting rights on the FSNA Board in 1948. Hampton University established the Mary Elizabeth Carnegie Archives in 1977, the first in the nation to create a historical repository and archives to preserve the documents and contributions of nurses of color.
Mary Elizabeth Carnegie went on to serve on the editorial staff of The American Journal of Nursing from 1953–1978, was a senior editor of Nursing Outlook, and the first editor of Nursing Research. In her retirement she authored the only resource to examine over a century of Black nursing history. The Path We Tread: Blacks in Nursing Worldwide, 1854–1994 was first published in 1986, with subsequent editions published during the nineties through 2000. She was a former president of the American Academy of Nursing and was inducted into the American Nurses Hall of Fame as a Living Legend. Committed to challenging racism and creating a more inclusive and equitable space for black nurses, she has said: “If I have done anything by taking a stand for racial equality in the nursing profession and making sure that black nurses are in the literature, having been left out for so long, I feel that I have fulfilled my purpose for having been in this World.”
Sources
We sourced information for the above biography from Virginia Nursing Hall of Fame and the American Association for the History of Nursing.
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.
