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BACKGROUND
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America's first professional nurse, Linda Richards, was graduated in 1873 from the course in nursing at the New England Hospital for Women and children.
Six years later, the same school graduated America's first professional Negro nurse, Mary Mahoney.
The American Nurses' Association accepted registered Negro nurses as members as early as 1897.
Prior to 1916, the basis of ANA membership was the alumnae association, rather than the state nurses association. This enabled Negro nurses to join ANA through their alumnae associations, such as the Alumnae Association of Freedmen's Hospital of Washington, D. C.
As nursing schools opened their doors in most sections of the United States to competent students, regardless of color or creed, more and more Negro nurses joined ANA through their alumnae associations.
In most cases, the process of integrating Negro nurses into the ANA continued even after 1916, when the basis of ANA membership became the state and district nurses associations.
But in spite of this program, 15 states and one district continued to exclude qualified nurses from membership on a race basis. Negro nurses living in these states, who did not belong to an alumnae association, were thereby automatically barred from the ANA, since membership in a state body is required by the ANA Constitution.

WHAT ANA HAS DONE
Every nurse is important to America.
From the beginning, ANA took steps to protect the memberships of Negro professional registered nurses and nurses of other minority groups. This was done through associations like the Freedmen's Hospital Alumnae which remained constituent parts of ANA.
Where a state nurses association had no restrictions, a Negro professional registered nurse could become a member of ANA via the state association. 
Where there were restrictions, a Negro nurse could become a member of ANA directly through
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her affiliated alumnae association where such existed.
ANA has also protected the membership of Negro nurses who have moved from states without restrictions to those which had. This was done by granting such nurses state-resident membership in their alumnae associations.

COOPERATION
There is more to the story of our Intergroup Relationships Program.
Because of their special problems, Negro nurses found it necessary to have their own organization.
In 1908, Martha Franklin, a brilliant professional registered Negro nurse from Connecticut, founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in order to:
• achieve higher professional standards in nursing 
• raise the admission requirements of nursing schools
• break down discrimination
• develop leadership from the ranks of Negro nurses.
From the beginning, ANA cooperated closely with the NACGN and assisted it financially. For many years, ANA participated in a joint committee with the National League for Nursing Education and the National Organization of Public Health Nurses to work with NACGN. This committee worked to improve training of Negro nurses, to improve employment opportunities for Negro nurses, and to handle relations between personnel of various organizations.
Part of your Joint Committee's work with NACGN consisted of considering ways and means of opening ANA membership to all nurses on only one basis—professional status. 
In this, ANA and the other nursing organizations recognized that nursing and the need for nursing are universal. The fight against disease and for better health protection concerns all of us as human beings and as Americans. No group can dispense with or monopolize what the nurse has to offer.

CRUMBLING BARRIERS
During World War II, America made an intense effort to eliminate discrimination in all walks of life for the sake of national unity and national defense. Millions of Negroes throughout the country were
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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-26 21:20:21