Davis, Frances Elliott (1882–1965)

African-American nurse. Name variations: Frances Reed Elliott Davis; Frances Elliott Reed. Born Frances Elliott, April 28, 1882, near Shelby, North Carolina; died of a heart attack, May 2, 1965, in Mount Clemens, Michigan, just days before she was to be honored at an American Red Cross national convention; dau. of Emma Elliott (white dau. of a plantation owner) and Darryl Elliott (part black, part Cherokee sharecropper); Knoxville College, TN, teaching degree, 1907; m. William A. Davis (musician), Dec 24, 1921.

The 1st African-American nurse officially enrolled in the American Red Cross (July 1918), was employed by the Reed family who supplied her funds to attend Knoxville College; changing her name to Reed, entered Freedmen's Hospital Training School for Nurses in Washington, DC (1910); worked as private-duty nurse in Washington for 3 years; was the 1st African-American nurse accepted into American Red Cross (ARC) Town and Country Nursing Service course at Columbia University Teachers College; sent to ARC Town and Country Nursing Service in Jackson, TN (July 1917) to offer nursing services; during WWI, worked as ARC Public Health Service nurse in TN (1918); organized and sought funding to create the 1st training school for African-American nurses at Dunbar Hospital in Detroit; awarded Rosenwald fellowship to pursue a bachelors degree at Columbia University Teachers College (1929), but was too ill to accept; served on staff of Eloise Hospital in Wayne Co., Michigan (1945–51).