Adah Belle Samuels Thoms

Born: January 12, 1870, Richmond, Virginia
Died: February 21, 1943, New York, New York
Parents: Harry and Melvina Samuels
Education:

Elementary public and normal school, Richmond, Virginia
Cooper Union, New York, New York, 1890s, studied elocution and speech
Woman's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage, New York, Graduated in 1900 (nursing course)
Lincoln Hospital and Home School of Nursing, New York, New York, Graduated 1905
Continuing education courses at the New York School of Social Work, Hunter College and New School for Social Research, New York, New York

Married: Adah Thoms married for a brief time early and used the surname Thoms throughout her career. She married Henry Smith in 1923 and was widowed within a year.

Career in Nursing:

St. Agnes Hospital, Raleigh, North Carolina, Nurse, 1900-1903
Lincoln Hospital and Home, New York, New York, Head Nurse, Surgical Ward, 1905; Operating Room Nurse and Supervisor of Surgical Division, 1905-1906; Assistant Superintendent of Nurses, 1906-1923; Served as Acting Director of the School of Nursing for this same period but was never named director because, at that time, African American women were seldom promoted to upper-level positions.

Portrait

Bibliography

Adah Samuels Thoms was in the forefront of efforts directed toward achieving equal opportunity for women. She was committed to organizations as a way to achieve goals. She organized and served as president for ten years of the Lincoln Hospital Alumnae Association. In that capacity, she invited Martha Franklin, founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) to hold the first meeting of that Association in New York under the sponsorship of the Alumnae Association. Thoms was a charter member of the NACGN and served as its first Treasurer. She was later President and was the first recipient of the Mary Mahoney Award from NACGN. This award later became one of the highest honors bestowed by the American Nurses Association.

Thoms campaigned for the enrollment of black nurses by the American Red Cross, the path to the United States Army Nurse Corps. She urged black nurses to enroll in 1917 when war was declared against Germany and refused to accept their rejection because of race. Jane A. Delano, Chairman of he American Red Cross Nursing Service became an ally in this campaign and eventually the Surgeon General agreed to a limited enrollment. The first African-American nurses were enrolled in July 1918 but it was not until the height of the flu epidemic in December and after the war was over that 18 black nurses were appointed to the Army Nurse Corps.

In 1921, during the NACGN Convention in Washington, D.C., Thoms was received at the White House by President and Mrs. Warren G. Harding. Concerned about ethics in nursing, Thoms encouraged older nurses to work in the development of younger nurses to promote professional ideals. When a movement began to merge the NACGN with the National Medical Association, Thoms was an outspoken critic of the idea. She believed there could be a connection short of merger that would allow nurses to retain their identity. She supported a movement toward the consolidation with the American Nurses Association and the National Organization of Public Health Nurses. Thoms was an original inductee in the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1976.