The Tenacious Nurse Nichols

An Unsung African American Civil War Hero

There is only one known image of Lucy Higgs Nichols, a Civil War nurse who escaped slavery. In this captivating photograph dated to 1898, the elderly Lucy is the sole female and the only person of color. She stands stately in the middle of a large group of war veterans at a reunion that she diligently attended every year. Some of these soldiers were from the Indiana 23rd Regiment, the men who fiercely advocated for her Civil War nurse's pension in the 1890s. Her story is remarkable—a journey from enslavement in Tennessee, to freedom and service among the ranks of the Union Army, and finally to independence and national recognition from the press, the Grand Army of the Republic, and even Congress. Despite considerable obstacles and unimaginable pain, Lucy achieved notoriety, nobility, and self-sufficiency in a post-Civil War era that often denied black Americans and women justice and opportunity.