Maxine Haynes, 85; Nurse Broke Color Barrier in Seattle

Maxine Haynes, 85, a nurse who brought down the color barrier in Seattle’s hospital nursing ranks, died Sunday at her home in Seattle. The cause of death was not reported.

Born Maxine Pitter to one of the city’s early black families, she enrolled at the University of Washington in 1936 when there were fewer than two dozen black students on campus, but was denied admission to the nursing school because of dormitory segregation. She earned a degree in sociology in 1941.

She was eventually admitted to a nursing school in New York City. After completing her studies, she worked at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York.

She returned to Seattle in 1945 and applied for a nursing job at Providence Hospital and was hired, becoming the first African American nurse hired by the hospital. The hospital, now called Swedish Medical Center, established a nursing scholarship in her honor.

She lived in Los Angeles in the 1950s, working at what was then County Hospital and earning a master’s degree in nursing from UCLA. She taught at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles before returning to Seattle in the late 1960s and was later appointed assistant professor of nursing at the University of Washington -- the same school that decades earlier had refused her bid to become a nurse.