9000 African American nurses applied to join the Army Nurse Corps during WW2.
Ignoring most of these applications, and with a shortage of nursing staff by January of 1945, President Roosevelt, in his state of the union address announced plans to establish a nursing draft.
This drew considerable condemnation from civil rights organisations..
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the first African American to be elected to congress from New York, also denounced the decision:
“It is absolutely unbelievable that in times like these, when the world is going forward, that there are leaders in our American life who are going backward. It is further unbelievable that these leaders have become so blindly and unreasonably un-American that they have forced our wounded men to face the tragedy of death rather than allow trained nurses to aid because these nurses’ skins happen to be of a different color.”
With pressure from the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the president realized the folly of the legislation, and subsequently ended racial enlistment restrictions for Army nurses that year.
But by the end of WW2, just 500 African American nurses held commissions compared to 59,000 white nurses. This accounted for just 0.8% of the Army Nurse Corps.
This channel has endeavored to be a celebration of women’s history as well as fashion. Many of the films inadvertently highlight the sexism of the past, and most would agree that when possible, providing some perspective, in the video descriptions, is as important to the videos, as the clothing or styles they present. Finding any film material related to black women’s lives is like finding diamonds in a desert.
While this short film, taken at face value, was a small positive attempt during WW2, to highlight that black lives matter, we felt it important to provide more perspective.
The facts related in this video’s description about the harsh realities of segregation faced by women of color in the 1940’s, do make for uncomfortable reading. They are not politically motivated, they are simply part of history.
To know these facts is to have even more appreciation for these amazing women, and their courage in the face of adversity.
Read More:
https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/african-american-nurses-world-war-ii
Colorized by Glamour Daze using Deoldify.
Credit: Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
All American News, I. (1945) All-American news. -03, no. 4. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018601435/
#blacklivesmatter #blackwomen #blacknurses
