The National Conclave of Grady Graduate Nurses, an organization of professional nurse graduates of Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Atlanta, Georgia, first met in 1972. The organization is devoted to maintaining and publicizing the history of the school and its founder, Mrs. Ludie Andrews; to fostering high standards of nursing and health care; and to engaging the issues facing African Americans in the nursing profession. In 1917, the first class of the Municipal Training School for Colored Nurses entered Grady Hospital, where a school for white nurses had been founded in 1898. Organized and initially supervised by African American nurses, the Training School for Colored Nurses was administered by the director of the program for whites after 1923. In 1946, when Grady Hospital became part of the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority, the school was renamed Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. The hospital maintained two separate programs for black and white nurses until its integration in 1964; it closed the nursing school in 1982. In 1965, black Grady Graduates, invited from Detroit to a School of Nursing homecoming, arrived in Atlanta only to be excluded from the whites-only reunion. In discussing the situation, Grady Graduates from across the country discovered a common interest in addressing the political, educational, and economic status of African American nurses and developed a renewed sense of comradeship. After an organizational meeting in Atlanta in 1968, the first National Conclave of Grady Graduate Nurses met in Detroit in 1972. The Conclave, which incorporated in 1977, has met biennially since 1975. Many Conclave members also belong to local Grady alumnae groups or to chapters of the Grady Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association (which integrated its black and white chapters in 1972). Hosts of the Conclave's national convention have included groups of Grady Graduates in New York, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Raising awareness of the accomplishments of Mrs. Ludie Clay Andrews (1875-1969), founder of the Municipal Training School for Colored Nurses and Georgia's "Dean of Black Nurses," remains central to the Conclave's mission. Mrs. Andrews earned a degree in nursing at Spelman Seminary. (Spelman closed its nursing program in 1928.) She was supervisor at another training school in 1914, when the city of Atlanta named her to create the nurse training program for African Americans at Grady Municipal Hospital. While organizing the school, selecting its first students, and working to achieve its accreditation, Mrs. Andrews, at her own expense, continued a legal battle she had initiated with the Georgia Board of Nurse Examiners. She fought for ten years in order to secure for African American graduate nurses the right to sit for the same certification exam taken by white nurses. In 1920, the year the Training School for Colored Nurses graduated its first class, Mrs. Andrews won for her students the right to earn the title, Registered Nurse. The National Grady Nurses Conclave has publicized the accomplishments of Mrs. Andrews with a plaque placed at Grady Hospital, a portrait of her presented to Spelman College, and a major exhibit at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. Since 1975, the Conclave has bestowed as its highest honor the Ludie Andrews Distinguished Service Award.

Grady Graduates have had varied, successful professional lives, and a number were pioneering African American women in their achievements. Many earned advanced degrees, and some entered research or education; others have had administrative careers in health care and nonprofit organizations; and still others undertook second careers in or out of health care. Numerous Grady Graduates have had distinguished careers in nursing, including at Grady Hospital, and several attained important leadership positions in the profession, including the first African American presidents of the Georgia Nurses Association and the Michigan Nurses Association. Verdelle Brim Bellamy, an early organizer of the Conclave, later served as President of the Georgia Board of Nursing, the very board whose exclusionary policies Mrs. Andrews had fought. The Conclave's first Honorary Member was another pioneering African American nurse, Mrs. Mabel K. Staupers, the first Executive and last President of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, the professional organization that achieved integration of the American Nurses Association.

The biennial conclave provides Grady Graduates with an opportunity to meet for serious discussion of issues as health care and society continue to evolve. From its inception, the Conclave has also addressed recruitment, retention and development of African Americans in the nursing profession. It grants scholarships to nursing students, and at the convention, workshops provide members with an opportunity for continuing education. Topics over the years have included geriatric care, AIDS, substance abuse, and information technology. Fellowship is another important purpose of the National Conclave of Grady Graduate Nurses, and the meetings provide the nurses with the opportunity to socialize, to share their memories of Grady, to celebrate their accomplishments, and to look to their profession's future.