Hazel Johnson-Brown was a determined woman who wasn’t going to let anyone tell her she couldn’t be a nurse.
Not only did she achieve that title, but Johnson-Brown would go on to become the first black female general in the U.S. Army in 1979 and the first black chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.
Early Life
Born in Pennsylvania in 1927, she was one of seven children. All of her family members worked on the farm and held other jobs. She took on domestic work when she was 12, but even then knew she wanted to be a nurse.
When she graduated from high school, the West Chester School of Nursing in her hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania, rejected her because she was black.
She moved to New York and studied at the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing. Returning home, she worked for the Philadelphia Veterans Association and learned about the Army Nurse Corps, which President Harry Truman had racially integrated seven years earlier.
Army Nurse Corps
She joined the Army Nurse Corps and her first tour was in a hospital in Japan. She worked in operating rooms and trained nurses who were on their way to Vietnam.
She was once assigned to go to Vietnam, but became ill. The nurse who took her place was killed in the surprise attack on the unit shortly after they arrived in the country.
Johnson-Brown briefly left the Army to earn her nursing degree from Villanova University. She then returned to active duty.
The first of many assignments was as an operating room nurse at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She continued to earn degrees and continued to teach nurses.
She was given progressively more responsible positions wherever the Army needed her.
In 1979, she was nominated to become the 16th chief of the Army Nurse Corps with a promotion to brigadier general. It made her the first black woman and the first chief with an earned doctorate to be appointed to that position.
She was also only the third woman to achieve the rank of general in the Army. At the time, white nurses outnumbered black nurses 12-to-1.
Accomplishments
Johnson-Brown was not one to sit on her laurels. As chief, she pushed several initiatives.
She promoted academic scholarships for ROTC nursing students and set up a clinical nursing summer camp for ROTC cadets.
She was the first to publish a “Standards of Practice for the Army Nurse Corps.” She promoted quality assurance measures in treatment facilities and encouraged members of the corps to engage in research.
Johnson-Brown believed in the important roles that the rank and file nurses played in the Army and gave them shared responsibility for planning the future of the corps.
She promoted education and worked to expand opportunities for Army Reserve and National Guard nurses in top management positions.
After her four-year term, she retired from the Army Nurse Corps.
Ongoing Work
She still wasn’t done changing the nursing world. She continued to teach at nursing schools at Georgetown University and George Mason University. She helped found the Center for Health Policy, Research & Ethics at George Mason.
In 1990, when many of the employees of Fort Belvoir Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, were deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm, she volunteered to work in the surgical suite.
Johnson-Brown twice earned the title “Army Nurse of the Year” and received many other medals.
When she died in 2011, the House of Representatives passed a joint resolution commending her “significant contributions to the nursing profession and her dedication to the U.S. Army.
She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a woman who successfully pursued a dream that others would have denied to her.