Born: 1861, United States
Died: 25 November 1935
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Namah
The following is republished from the Arlington National Cemetery. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Namahoyke “Namah” Curtis, U.S. Army (1861–1935) — Namahyoke Curtis, known as Namah, was a prominent African American nurse in late-19th-century Washington, D.C. During the Spanish-American War (1898), the Surgeon General assigned her to recruit other Black women to serve as U.S. Army contract nurses. She recruited as many as 32 Black nurses for the war effort. Curtis was of African American, European and American Indian descent, and she married Dr. Austin Curtis, a leading Black physician and the superintendent of Freedmen’s Hospital in D.C. She is buried in the “Nurses’ Section,” which contains the gravesites of many military nurses and the Spanish-American War Nurses Memorial. (Section 21, Grave 15999-A-1)