Profile of a leader: unearthing Ethel Johns's "buried" commitment to racial equality, 1925

In 1925, Canadian nurse leader Ethel Johns was hired by the Rockefeller Foundation to study the status of black women in nursing in the United States. Despite the acknowledged excellence of her report, the study was shelved. It remained "buried" in the basement of the Rockefeller headquarters for almost 60 years until American historian Darlene Clark Hine discovered it there in the 1980s. The aim of this article is to extend current understandings of Johns based on this and other evidence not accessible to her biographer in 1973. The discussion will illuminate her commitment to social equality by highlighting the 1925 report that perceived and articulated the racist character of relations between white institutions and black nurses in an era when few others would do so. It seems vital that this study be recognized as a focal point in Johns's outstanding nursing career, and that her success in leadership be acknowledged as inextricably linked with her passion for justice and equality.