It was 1918 and the armistice ending World War I had just been signed when black nurses gathered at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, to take the photo that appears on our cover. Although the Army Nurse Corps had been established some 17 years earlier, black nurses had only just been permitted to join. Despite their honorable service in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and in World War I, it wasn't until the desperate need for nurses during the influenza pandemic of 1918 that black nurses were able to take significant steps toward equality.
Before 1900, especially in the South, segregation and discrimination affected both nursing school admissions and patient care. This resulted in the establishment of all-black hospitals and schools. Black nurses also started forming local urban clubs, culminating in the founding in 1908 of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN), an organization that played a pivotal role in gaining rights for black nurses.
Black nurses were still fighting for their rights when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Despite the surgeon general's plea for more nurses to enlist, the army set a quota of 56 black nurses. However, the NACGN helped to abolish this quota, and by the end of World War II, more than 500 black nurses had served in the army and four had served in the navy.
In 1946, the American Nurses Association (ANA) campaigned to persuade state and local associations to allow black membership. Two years later, Estelle Massey Osborne became the first black nurse to be elected to the ANA's board of directors. In 1962, the ANA amended its statement of purpose, to "encourage all members, unrestricted by consideration of nationality, race, creed, or color, to participate fully in association activities and to work for full access to employment and educational opportunities for nursing."
For more information on how black nurses have overcome adversity and the barriers that remain, see this month's Editorial.
Alison Bulman, senior editorial coordinator