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Author M. Elizabeth Carnegie to headline SUNY Upstate Black History Month events

Award-winning author and nurse M. Elizabeth Carnegie will deliver the keynote address at one of Upstate Medical University’s Black History Month programs, to be held Wednesday, Feb. 21 from noon to 2 p.m. in the Weiskotten Hall Medical Alumni Auditorium, 766 Irving Avenue, Syracuse. Carnegie’s lecture is free and open to the public. The theme of Upstate’s 2001 Black History Month celebration is “An Historical Perspective of Nursing.”

Carnegie broke the color barrier for nursing leadership at the national level in the 1950s. Throughout her career, she has authored several publications, including “The Path We Tread: Blacks in Nursing 1854-1990.” After receiving a nursing diploma from Lincoln School for Nurses in 1937, she went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in sociology from West Virginia State College, a master’s degree from Syracuse University, and a doctor of public administration from New York University. Last June she was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame. Now retired, she remains actively involved in various professional, civic, and cultural organizations.

Following Carnegie’s lecture, SUNY Upstate will honor Gwendolyn Snellings Lipscomb, Class of 1968, the first African American nurse to graduate from the College of Nursing at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Lipscomb has directed Alabama’s minority health programs since 1998 and is currently the director of minority health for the Alabama Department of Public Health, where she works to improve the health of the state’s underserved racial and ethnic populations.

Other events planned for Black History Month are: