Hulda Margaret Lyttle

Hulda Margaret Lyttle Frazier (1889 to 1983) was an American nurse educator and hospital administrator who spent most of her career in Nashville, Tennessee, at Meharry Medical College School of Nursing and the affiliated Hubbard Hospital. Born in Nashville, she enrolled in 1910 in the first class of the Hubbard Hospital training school for nurses and graduated in 1913 with its first graduating class, then earned a certificate at Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in New York. In 1915 she became the first African American to pass the Tennessee nursing licensing examination. She directed the Hubbard training school, was appointed superintendent of Hubbard Hospital in 1923, and in 1938 became dean of the School of Nursing, which then raised its admission standards and won accreditation. She advocated modernizing and professionalizing training programs for African American nurses and improving practice standards in hospitals that served them. She organized the first Lambda Pi Alpha Sorority chapter in 1930 and held office in the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses.