A pioneer leader in Black nursing and nursing administration, Adah Belle Thoms co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses with Mary Eliza Mahoney. She was born Adah Belle Samuels in Richmond, Virginia, on January 12, 1870, during the early years of reconstruction following the Civil War. The Samuels family valued education as a means to acquiring jobs in the new free labor economy and preserving their civil rights. Education became a necessity for all of Richmond's citizens, both Black and White, as they began to rebuild after the Civil War. Richmond Normal was the only school preparing Black teachers in the 1880s when Samuels would have come of age. Richmond Normal was the equivalent of a technical school.
In the 1890s, she moved to New York to study speech at Cooper Union. She then decided to become a nurse. After living in New York City for a few years, Samuels entered a program for nursing at the Women's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage in New York. In 1900, she graduated from the Women's Infirmary and School of Therapeutic Massage. She was the only Black woman in her class of thirty students. By 1903, she realized her training was not sufficient for the type of professional nursing she desired and returned to New York. Later she attended St. Agnes Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. Adah continued her nursing studies at the Lincoln Hospital and Home School of Nursing. This school was for Black women, and she graduated in 1905.
In 1906, she served as superintendent of nurses and acting director at Lincoln Hospital earning $25 a month for the 24-hour shifts she worked. Samuels was unable to be appointed to that of full superintendent due to discrimination that prevented African Americans from holding senior positions of administrative leadership. Because Lincoln was controlled by a White board, major administrative positions were believed to be beyond African Americans' capabilities. This double standard was typical of this period as Black nurses and doctors were denied admission to the best schools for medical training. It was not surprising that this policy of exclusion from access to quality medical training prevented blacks from acquiring better jobs and advancing into managerial positions.
Alarmed by the additional racist burden that faced Black Nurses eager to earn recognition as competent professionals, Samuels worked with other important nurses like Martha Minerva Franklin and Mary Mahoney. They wanted to create an organization for Black nurses. In 1907, they held a meeting at Lincoln Home and Hospital, hosted by Adah. In 1908, they officially started the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). About 52 Black nurses joined. The main goal of this group was to make sure Black women nurses could be fully included in the nursing profession. They wanted equal chances for education, jobs, and pay. NACGN raised its level of nursing expertise and knowledge for its membership through cooperation and contact with leading nurses from around the world.
Samuels's life outside of her nursing profession revealed an active religious life as a member of St. Marks AME Church. St. Marks was a large church in Harlem and actively engaged in many social gospel efforts. During this period, Samuels married Dr. Joseph William Thoms, on September 20th 1910 in Nassau County, New York. She became involved in international efforts to advance nursing, attending the International Council of Nurses in 1912. In the first part of the 20th century. Beginning in 1916, Adah Samuels Thoms joined the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a way to enlist additional support for her social reform efforts and confront the injustice she saw in the way health care was delivered to the Black community.
Before the United States entered World War I, the American Red Cross, recruited about 23,000 nurses for the Army Nurse Corps. Only half of these women would served overseas. However, African American nurses were barred from serving. Black nurses continued to register with the Red Cross and in large numbers, but when they were not being called, Thoms took it upon herself to organize a separate corps for Black nurses. Beginning in 1917, Thoms founded the Blue Circle Nurse Corps as a clearing house for Black nurses who would work in local communities. She sought the aid of "The Circle of Negro War Relief", a health and welfare organization that provided assistance to impoverished African American families in rural, Southern communities.
During World War I, she played a very important role. She sought to enlist Black nurses following the Army's call for medical personnel. She pushed the American Red Cross to allow Black nurses to join. Red Cross nursing leader Jane Delano informed Thoms that she was ready to enroll 150 qualified Black nurses. They were to get the same “pay and allowances” as White nurses, for assignment to a training camp for Black soldiers. But these assignments failed to materialize. In 1918, prominent Black leaders vociferously challenged this inaction and joined Samuels. Because of her efforts, the Surgeon General agreed in July 1918 to let African American nurses join the Army Nurse Corps. They started serving during the flu epidemic in December 1918.
Thoms continued at Lincoln Hospital after World War I until 1923. Two years earlier, her career gained further national attention when she was appointed by Dr. C. C. Pierce, the Assistant Surgeon General of the Army, to serve on the Women's Advisory Council of Venereal Diseases of the United States Public Health Service. Venereal disease among the African American population was a prevalent health problem as it was among other racial/ethnic groups particularly with respect to returning soldiers from the war. Lack of reliable research and education on the subject contributed to the problem in addition to racist assumptions that affected African American healthcare and welfare needs.
During 1921, Adah Thoms was even invited to the White House to meet President Warren G. Harding and his wife. This happened during a convention for the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in Washington, D.C. Thoms retired from Lincoln Hospital in 1923 and married Henry Smith. Tragically that marriage ended one year later with his sudden death. It is not clear why her first marriage ended, but Thoms continued to use her married name throughout her career. In 1929, she published "Pathfinders: A History of the Progress of Colored Graduate Nurses". In 1936, the NACGN singled out Thoms and awarded her the organization's first Mary Mahoney Medal, named for the first Black woman to become a professional nurse. She eventually returned to Lincoln Hospital as a patient and died in February of 1943. She was one of the original inductees to the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1976.