Sara Fleetwood
*Sara Iredell Fleetwood's birth is celebrated on this date in 1849. She was a Black nurse, clubwoman, and teacher.
Sara Louise Iredell was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Elizabeth Susan (née Webb) and Geoffrey George Iredell. Her father was originally from Edenton, North Carolina, and was the son of an enslaved person who had been emancipated. When Sarah and her sister Laura were born, he operated a barber shop in St. Louis. Her mother, originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the sister of Frank J. Webb. They were the children of abolitionists Louisa (née Burr), the illegitimate daughter of Aaron Burr and Francis Webb.
During Iredell's childhood, the family moved to Philadelphia, making their home with their Webb cousins. Between 1856 and 1858, she attended Oberlin College as a pupil-teacher. After she graduated from Oberlin, Iredell moved back to Philadelphia and began teaching in public schools. In 1863, she became a founding member of the Ladies Union Association, serving as secretary. The Ladies Union Association was created to fundraise and help black soldiers who were either sick or wounded. In 1866, Iredell worked as a pupil-teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth, completing her training in 1867.
She then taught from 1867 to 1868 at the Roberts Vaux School before moving to teach in the public school system of Frederick, Maryland. Because of low pay and the treatment black teachers received, she left Maryland and began working as a teacher in Washington, D.C. In Washington, Iredell became involved in the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children. She met and married Medal of Honor recipient Christian Fleetwood in 1869, and the couple had a daughter, Edith.
They were very involved with the African American professional community, hosting literary salons and entertaining their guests with theatrical and musical performances. In 1892, Fleetwood was one of the nine co-founders of the Colored Women's League of Washington, an organization that focused on issues faced by black women. She spoke at various functions addressing issues like childcare and parenting training, establishing nurseries for working women, and sanitation. In 1898, she and Anna Evans Murray attended the Congress of Mothers as representatives of the Colored Women's League.
In 1893, Fleetwood enrolled in the first class of nurses admitted to Howard University's Freedman's Hospital School of Nursing, studying under Daniel Hale Williams. That same year, she and her cousin, Evelyn D. Shaw, organized relief efforts to feed and house those impacted by the Panic of 1893. She graduated from Freedman's in 1896 and became a private nurse in Washington. In February 1901, when the previous nursing supervisor resigned, Dr. Austin M. Curtis appointed Fleetwood as the training school's replacement supervisor.
She took a national civil service examination to qualify for the post, outscoring applicants nationwide. Her appointment marked the first time a black supervisor held the post. In August of the same year, she was confirmed as a supervisor by the chief surgeon, Dr. William A. Warfield, who reappointed her and gave her the title of Directress of Nurses. She remained the director until 1904 when she resigned from the post.
Fleetwood organized the Freedmen's Nurses Association and attended the national convention of the Nurses Association Alumni as the association's delegate in 1904. In 1907, when the examining board for graduate nurses was established in Washington, D. C., the Graduate Nurses' Association selected her as the first black representative on the board. When her term expired in June of that same year, she was not reappointed, and despite protests by the commissioners, no other African American representative was appointed to the board.
Sara Fleetwood died on February 1, 1908, in Washington, D. C., from diabetes. She and her husband's papers make up the Christian A. Fleetwood Papers donated to the Library of Congress in 1947. The site for the house in which the couple resided, at 319 U Street NW, in the LeDroit Park Historic District of Washington, D. C., is part of the African American Heritage Trail in the capital city and is identified by a historical marker.
