After the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920, 76-year-old Mahoney was one of the first women in Boston to register to vote, let alone one of the first black women to do so. īeyond her commitment to advancing black women in the nursing profession, Mahoney took her civic liberties seriously while she was living in Boston. Adah Thoms, co-founder of the NACGN remarked that, “she was an inspiration to the entire group of nurses present,” and “through her efforts on this occasion a demonstration for nurses was held at the New England Hospital”. In 1909, at the first NACGN convention, Mary Eliza Mahoney delivered a powerful welcoming address, in which she “railed against the ongoing discrimination and inequality in the discipline and called for a demonstration at the New England Hospital for the admission of more African-American students”. Her solution was to co-found the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN).

Her leadership in the nursing community sprouted after she saw little diversity in the American Nursing Association. After her parents’ death, she permanently moved back to Boston, where she resided on Warwick St. īeing the first black graduate nurse in the nation, Mahoney committed herself to service and began travelling to treat families in Boston, MA, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. She was one of three nurses to complete the sixteen-month program on August 1, 1879, being the only African American. It was on Maat age 33 that Mahoney enrolled in the New England Hospital for Women and Children’s intensive nursing program with eighteen other women. The American Civil War took place during Mahoney’s teenage years, and she soon began her involvement in Boston’s New England Hospital as an employee, working as a cook and laundress.

She attended the Philips School, one of the first integrated schools in Boston, which desegregated in 1855 after the Roberts v City of Boston state court ruling, defended by Charles Sumner. Mahoney grew up in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood as the oldest of three siblings.

Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in the spring of 1845 to Charles and Mary Jane Mahoney, two former slaves from North Carolina.

Mary eliza mahoney grave