Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sister

The Tuskegee Airmen were not the only ones making history at Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF) in Alabama during World War II. While in pilot training, they saluted the base nurses who were officers in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps (ANC). The nurses who served on the base during the 1940’s fought gender and racial discrimination. The Department of the Army was slow in allowing “Negro” women into the ANC – that is until the United States entered World War II and there was a shortage of nurses – especially those to nurse black servicemen or prisoners of war. Approximately 28 black nurses served at TAAF. The segregated Army had limited black ANC nurses to 500 more or less during the war. That was out of a total 50,000-plus Army Nurse Corps nurses who served during WWII. My mother was one of the black nurses, but never talked much about her military career. It was not until she suffered a series of strokes, that I, her only child, was looking through her military scrapbook. Her scrapbook laid the basis for telling the story of these women who played a part in the integration of the military and nursing.