February 20, 2019 | Celebrating Black History Month

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header XXIII, Issue Number 4
February 20, 2019
bevphoto Dear Colleagues,

I know you probably know this, but, just in case, February is Black History Month. To celebrate, and highlight its significance, we are displaying photographs of four inspirational women - two from the past and two who are very much alive - in the lobby of our Washington, DC, office.

  • Mary Seacole, who acquired knowledge of herbal medicine in Jamaica, where she was born, travelled independently to the Crimea in the 1850s to care for sick and wounded servicemen on the battlefield of the Crimean War. There is a statue of her in London to commemorate the incredible service and care she provided the British soldiers. And she was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991.
  • In America a decade after Mary Seacole served, former slave Susie King Taylor tended to an all-Black army troop, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), later designated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where her husband served during the Civil War. Her memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: An African American Woman's Civil War Memoir, was republished by the University of Georgia Press in 2006. Taylor is also remembered as the first African American to teach openly in a school for formerly enslaved people in Georgia.
    • Mary Seacole, Susie King Taylor, Mae Jemison, Lauren Underwood
  • Mae Jemison is a physician, engineer, and a dancer, not a nurse, but she is one of my heroes nonetheless. After medical school and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps and was then selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in September 1992. Later she founded a company researching the application of technology to daily life and even appeared on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • Now, to November 2018, when Lauren Underwood was elected as the US Representative for Illinois's 14th congressional district and became the youngest black woman to serve in Congress. Rep. Underwood received her degree in nursing from the University of Michigan, where a course on nursing politics inspired her to enter health care policy. She received two master's degrees from Johns Hopkins University, in nursing and public health, and worked first as a policy professional and later as a senior advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped implement the Affordable Care Act. She also served as an adjunct instructor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies. You may have noticed Rep. Underwood’s name as one of the sponsors of H.R. 728, the Title VIII Nursing Workforce Reauthorization Act, which I wrote about in my last Member Update.

    • As I like to say, colleagues, history is us. We are making history, challenging it, and weaving it to reflect a truer story than before. We never know the impact we will have on those around us, and we never know where acts of leadership will emerge.

    A year ago, our focus at the NLN was on our unique history as we prepared for our 125th-anniversary celebration at the 2018 NLN Education Summit in Chicago. We uncovered facts and photographs and assembled a wonderful book, Inspiring Words: Selected NLN Addresses, 1893-2018 which we gave to all attendees and posted for download on the NLN website.

    Also online is a link to the NLN Collection at the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. We are extremely proud of this collection. I want to thank you for the progress we have made. Let me explain. The archives project would not have been possible without the support of the Independence Foundation of Philadelphia, which granted us a generous gift in the form of a matching grant to fund the development and implementation of a full archival repository of NLN holdings. The NLN Foundation for Nursing Education was given $25,000 annually for this work, and thanks to our supporters, we successfully met our matching goal in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The NLN Foundation continues to raise funds to preserve our past as a resource for scholars investigating the history of nursing, nursing education, and nursing accreditation in the United States.

    To better understand the significance of the NLN Archive Project, let me call your attention to the Headlines from the NLN in the March/April 2019 issue of Nursing Education Perspectives, which was published online just yesterday - the print edition will be mailed at the beginning of March. In this column the director of the Barbara Bates Center and chair of its Advisory Board, Drs. Patricia D’Antonio and Sandra B. Lewenson, discuss the work involved in creating an archive such as ours and why the NLN is so important to the history of nursing. They talk about how the League, from its earlier days, "embraced a mission of inclusivity and diversity in nursing education," and point out how during World War II we worked with Ohio Rep. Frances Payne Bolton to ensure that black schools of nursing would be eligible for federal grants through the Cadet Nurse Corps Act.

    You will also find a discussion of the League’s commitment to quality in nursing education and our leadership in the Curriculum Revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly, this was a reaction to the increasingly hospital-centered, technologically driven, post-war environment, when "nurse educators quickly grasped that traditional methods of pedagogy failed to meet the needs of students, patients, and populations struggling with chronic health care needs." Does that sound familiar and current, if not futuristic? The authors point out that while our "founders may have used different language, ... the archives provide a way to investigate what was and is core to the NLN’s educational mission, and what reflects changing social norms, political climates, and economic realities."

    I want to humbly thank Drs. D’Antonio and Lewenson for this rich and engrossing article and invite you to visit our archives at the Bates Center, where you can view more than 50 digitized videotapes produced by the NLN during the 1980s and 1990s. These had been stored in less than ideal conditions and it is wonderful that they are now available for viewing. Eventually, the collection will include "a repository of proceedings of annual conventions, minutes of meetings, biographical data of early leaders, and correspondence detailing trends and historic milestones." There is still much to do and we continue to welcome your contributions. I am truly grateful to our historians and those like former NLN president and former chief program officer Dr. Elaine Tagliareni, who have a burning desire to see the NLN history told.

    February is a short month and we are looking forward to March when we celebrate National Women's History Month - another good time to talk about nursing history and the special contributions of our remarkable founders. As always, let us take on leadership roles where we are needed, and imagine how, at some point in the future, we will be remembered by future generations. You don’t have to look far. Our president, Dr. Rumay Alexander, is an outstanding leader, fully authorized in her role for the NLN and as professor, associate vice chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She always raises my game, and I’m known to be vertically challenged.

    What legacy are we leaving, colleagues? To whom are we passing the torch in this relay race of caring, integrity, diversity/inclusion, and excellence? My torch is too bright to be a simple baton. I’m passing along purpose, power, and passion. Let us keep the torches burning by sharing with one another the beauty of nursing and its healing power.

    All the best,

    signature
    Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN
    Chief Executive Officer

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