Adah Belle Thoms
Adah Belle Thoms also Adah Belle Samuels Thoms (born January 12, 1870 in Richmond (Virginia) , † February 21, 1943 in New York City ) was an African-American nurse and champion for equal rights for colored nurses in the United States of America . She paved the way for black nurses to join the American Red Cross and was a founding member and president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses .
Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was born in Richmond on January 12, 1870, to Harry and Melvina Samuels. As a young woman she was briefly married and kept the married name Thoms. Thoms first worked as a teacher in Virginia, but then moved to New York in the 1890s because of the better educational opportunities for black women. There she attended the Cooper Union to study rhetoric and speech. She then attended the Woman's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage and passed her nursing exam in 1900. She then attended the Lincoln Hospital and Home School of Nursing , also in New York, and graduated in 1905. She worked at this same institution from 1906 to 1923 as director, but because of the racial discrimination prevailing at the time , she was denied the title of director.
Together with Martha Minerva Franklin , Thoms organized the first meeting of black sisters in New York and founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) with her and Mary Eliza Mahoney . Thoms was also internationally committed to the concerns of black nurses and attended the conference of the International Council of Nurses in Cologne in 1912 . Thoms became President of the NACGN in 1916 and used her position intensively for the admission of colored nurses to the American Red Cross during the First World War . Membership in the Red Cross was the way to serve in the US Army Nurse Corps . Jane A. Delano, chairwoman of the American Red Cross, became an ally of Thom, and eventually the surgeon general agreed in July 1918 to allow a limited number of black sisters to join the Nurse Corps.
Thoms married a second time in 1921, and her husband Henry Smith died within a year. She published the first historical treatise on colored nurses in 1929: The Pathfinders: A History of the Progress of Colored Graduate Nurses . In 1936 she was the first nurse to receive the Mary Mahoney Medal . She stayed in New York and was particularly committed to improving the training of young black nurses before she died there on February 21, 1943.
She was posthumously honored with induction into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1976. In 2001 she was inducted into the Virginia Nursing Hall of Fame.
literature
- Althea T. Davis: Early Black American Leaders in Nursing: Architects for Integration and Equality Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0-7637-1009-1 pp. 125-145 (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sandra B. Lewenson: Taking Charge: Nursing, Suffrage, and Feminism in America, 1873-1920 Routledge, 2016. ISBN 978-1138983526 p. 65 (English)
- ↑ Virginia Nursing Hall of Fame: Adah Belle Samuels Thoms (English) accessed June 14, 2020
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thoms, Adah Belle |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thoms, Adah Belle Samuels (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American nurse and recipient of the Mary Mahoney Medal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 12, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Richmond, Virginia |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 21, 1943 |
| Place of death | New York City |