Tenacious Nurse Nichols: An Unsung African American Civil War Hero

From the horrors of slavery to the battlefields of the Civil War, Lucy Higgs Nichols has become a symbol of resilience and a trailblazer for justice and equality.

There are only two known images of Lucy Higgs Nichols, a Civil War nurse who escaped enslavement to join the Indiana 23rd Regiment. In one 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 whom she nursed and with whom she marched and fought. These soldiers 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 harrowing 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.