Image via Army Women’s Foundation.Brig. Gen. Hazel Johnson-Brown served with the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1983.

West Chester native Hazel Johnson-Brown was a nurse and educator who became the first Black woman general in the U.S. Army and the first Black chief of the Army Nurse Corps, writes Green Shoot Media for Noozhawk.

Johnson-Brown was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in 1927. After she graduated from high school, she attempted to join West Chester School of Nursing but was rejected because she was Black.

She moved to New York and attended the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing. She got a job at the Philadelphia Veterans Association before joining the Army Nurse Corps, where she served from 1955 to 1983. She continued her nursing education and was given progressively more responsible positions.

In 1979, she was promoted to brigadier general and became the 16th chief of the Army Nurse Corps. That made her only the third woman at the time to achieve the rank of general in the Army.

As chief, she promoted academic scholarships for ROTC nursing students and worked to expand opportunities at the top for Army Reserve and National Guard nurses, among many other accomplishments.

She died in 2011.