Please join the Heberden Society on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 at 5 PM EST for "When the Walls Came Down: The Interrelationships between Nursing, Race, and Medicine at New York’s Lincoln School for Nurses, 1898–1961."
When the walls came down, the intertwined structures of nursing, race, and medicine in the United States were fundamentally redefined. This lecture investigates the historical trajectory of New York’s Lincoln School for Nurses, the first institution established to educate Black women in the arts of nursing, and situates it within the broader framework of racial segregation and integration in American healthcare. Lincoln School for Nurses functioned as both a site of professional empowerment and racial uplift during a period of systemic exclusion. Following Brown v. Board of Education (1954), integration efforts paradoxically expanded educational access while contributing to the closure of historically Black nursing schools, including Lincoln in 1961. Through this historical lens, the lecture interrogates how integration transformed the boundaries of race and profession in nursing, illuminating both the advancement and erasure it produced within American healthcare.
This is a hybrid lecture, co-sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine. Onsite attendance will be in the Belfer Building, 413 E69 St, Room 204-A. Virtual registration is availble here.
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