Rhetaugh Graves Dumas

Rhetaugh Etheldra Graves Dumas (1928 to 2007) was an American nurse, professor and health administrator. Born in Natchez, Mississippi, she took her nursing degree at Dillard University in 1951 and a master's at Yale School of Nursing in 1961, where she became chair of psychiatric nursing. At the National Institute of Mental Health she led psychiatric nursing education and from 1979 to 1981 was deputy director, the first nurse, woman or African American in that post. She was three times dean of the University of Michigan nursing school, the first black woman to be a dean there, and served as president of the American Academy of Nursing and the National League for Nursing.