Mapping Care Project: The History of Black Nurses in Chicago

Nursing in the Armed Forces

Since its beginnings, the nursing profession has been tied to war. Formal nurse training programs first began in the United States after the terrible injuries and diseases of the Civil War. Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross after serving as a nurse in wars in the U.S. and Europe.[1] Yet for many decades the U.S. military and the American Red Cross refused to accept the service of Black nurses, except during times of great crisis and nursing shortages. The demands of wartime have often forced institutions to break with established social norms, including racism. Black communities and organizations, particularly the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) also played an important role in pushing the military and the Red Cross to change their policies. From the start of the modern nursing field until today, Black nurses have sought to provide nursing care in the military, finding unique opportunities and challenges in their service in the armed forces.
 

Although they lived in segregated quarters, these nurses served both Black and white soldiers. De Priest was the 20th African American nurse to enroll with the American Red Cross on August 3, 1918, her pin read 20-A, and Virginia Richardson Steele's pin read 72-A, she enrolled on October 11, 1918. In 1922, former Chief Nurse at Camp Grant, Anne Williamson commented in a report on the "contingent of colored nurses stationed at Camp Grant" and detailed that "these nurses . . . were serious minded, quiet, business like women, well qualified to take charge of wards, had our colored patients been segregated . . . they gave several dinners and dances, . . . [a]s the need for nurses at the Camp became less acute . . . by the middle of July, their services in this Camp had terminated."tbd

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