Adah Belle Thoms

Adah Belle Samuels Thoms (January 12, 1870 – February 21, 1943) was an African American nurse who cofounded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (serving as President from 1916 to 1923), was acting director of the Lincoln School for Nurses (New York), and fought for African Americans to serve as American Red Cross nurses during World War I and eventually as U.S. Army Nurse Corps nurses starting with the flu epidemic in December 1918. She was among the first nurses inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame when it was established in 1976.

Biography Thoms was born Adah Belle Samuels in Richmond, Virginia, to Harry and Melvina Samuels.

As a young woman, she married briefly, and kept the surname Thoms. Before she became a nurse, she was a school teacher in Richmond, Virginia. In the 1890s, she went to New York to study elocution and speech at Cooper Union. She then studied nursing at the Women's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage, graduating in 1900 as the only black woman in a class of thirty. The organization, founded in 1908 by a group of 52 black nurses, aimed to secure the full integration of black women nurses into the nursing profession. Focused on the American Nurses' Association, nursing education programs, employment opportunities, and equal pay, the organization was ultimately dissolved by president Mabel Keaton Staupers in 1950, after successfully integrating the US Armed Forces (WWII) and the American Nurses' Association (1948).

Thoms served as president of the NACGN from 1916 to 1923, This was mainly because African Americans had better opportunities for advancement up North. Thoms enrolled in a nursing course at the Women's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage as a start to nursing.

In 1903, Thoms entered the program and was offered the position as head nurse of one of the surgical wards in 1904. In 1905, Thoms was hired as the head nurse at the Lincoln Hospital and Home. A year later, she was promoted to superintendent of nurses and acting director and kept the positions until she retired in 1923.