“Pity and compassion in a world of pain means nothing unless it leads to change (Bernardine Lacey, 2017).”

These memorable words from Dr. Lacey, who later became a participant in our oral history study, resonate because it highlights the depth and work needed to fully support African-American nursing students as they navigate the realities and challenges of being a nursing student in predominantly white institutions (PWI). This includes addressing individual, faculty, and systemic changes in order to promote success of these students.

Why does African-American oral history in nursing matter? It matters because of the paucity of data from this population about their past and current experiences within nursing education and indeed within the profession (Lewenson & Graham-Perel, 2020; Lewenson & Herrmann, 2008). Given long-standing disparities in the nursing workforce and poor healthcare outcomes in the African-American population (AACN, 2021; Hynson et al., 2022), it behooves us to better understand factors that may influence choosing to enter the profession, staying in nursing education programs, and being available to serve African-American and other minority populations as clinicians, educators and researchers. Oral history can serve as a cultural method for understanding and sharing the rich history of African-Americans and other non-majority populations. The personal, academic, and extensive professional experiences of our research participants, as former members of the profession, and who were educated in a PWI, provides credible expertise and wisdom to guide current recommendations related to nursing education of African-American nursing students.

The data reported here comes from a larger oral history study conducted with four of the first known African-American women who attended and graduated from the Georgetown University School of Nursing between 1960 and 1969. The purpose of the larger study was to examine the student experiences of these women as they navigated being a nursing student in a PWI at the height of the Civil Rights movement during the 1960's. The data reported here focuses on the response and discussion to several of our interview questions and the suggestions made by the four participants, specific to their recommendations for retaining African-American nursing students in nursing education programs, and supporting student success to completion in that process. The questions asked of all participants and reported on here included:

What were your academic, social and personal experiences as an undergraduate nursing student while attending a PWI in Washington, DC between 1960 and 1969?

What do you identify as distinguishing characteristics or factors that motivated, influenced and enabled you to achieve academic success?

What recommendations would you make on how to best retain undergraduate African-American students in nursing programs in order to support their academic success?