Military, Black Women in The

By: Linda Rochell Lane

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Military, Black Women in The

While serving one's country is widely held to be an honor and an act of patriotism, historically most governments have been reluctant to enlist women into their armed services. Combat in particular has been considered unnatural for women. Yet some women have defied traditional norms and become soldiers in various parts of the world.

Becoming a soldier in the United States has been a long and arduous process for women. Black women have had an especially difficult time entering the armed forces and have been forced to go through several stages in the quest to serve their country. The first phase consisted of individual acts of heroism and displays of patriotism. Next came the spirited efforts of individuals and groups to provide organized support. From these efforts sprang a number of support organizations in which serving the soldier and his family were primary objectives. A major turning point for black women and the military occurred during World War II, when black and white women finally donned the military uniform. At the next major juncture black women successfully tackled double integration: that of integration into white female units and then integration into all-male forces. Some even lived in coed facilities, which was a first for the military. While serving in an increased number of combat support roles and technical specialties, an ever-increasing number of women have found themselves on the battlefield. For women as a group, the 1991 Persian Gulf War was the point at which these increases and changes became truly significant. Today, black women contribute to most aspects of the United States military.

Women in the U.S. Army, 1985.  They were photographed on 11 November—Armistice Day, later Veterans Day.

© Bettye Lane

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Although there were a number of conflicts during the colonial period, the American Revolution was the first war waged by the nation. The fighting that began in 1775 became a war with the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence. Like their white counterparts, black Americans were torn between supporting Great Britain or siding with the United States. Indecisiveness in black men and women, however, arose out of their political status and not their political affiliations or loyalties. Most were slaves, and free black Americans were treated as quasi Americans. Moreover, it was unclear whether the British—who promised freedom to all black soldiers supporting the crown—or the Americans espousing ideals like “liberty and justice for all” offered the greatest opportunity for racial change. As a result, thousands of black men fought on both sides during the American Revolutionary War.

Though black men were able to enlist in the militia, black women were relegated to support roles. Little is known of their activities. One nameless free black maid contributed a large portion of her meager monthly wage to the war effort. Another unnamed free black woman gave soup and bread to hungry, incarcerated patriots. Phillis Wheatley composed an inspirational poem for General George Washington while he was stranded that dreadful winter at Valley Forge. Some black women were likely among the camp followers providing services such as cooking, washing, and caring for the sick, but existing records show no evidence of this. The records recall the names of only a few women who actually took up arms and fought during the Revolution. These include Nancy Hart, a six-feet tall Georgian; Margaret Corbin, known as Captain Molly, who was wounded in the 1776 attack on Fort Washington; and Deborah Sampson Gannett. Some historians have identified Gannett as a black heroine.

After the Revolutionary War ended, some escaped black slaves took shelter in Florida at a fort abandoned by the British during the war. General Andrew Jackson considered the fort a threat to United States security and ordered its destruction. At “Fort Negro,” as it was known, as many as three hundred black men, women, and children were killed. The fort was completely destroyed.

Wars of Emancipation and Empire

Black women played more varied military support roles in the Civil War (1861–1865), the bloodiest war in U.S. history. Slave women in the South sustained plantations by tending the cotton, which the Confederate government relied on to finance the war. The Union army utilized Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a slave girl, to spy on the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. The most noted black woman spy of the period is Harriet Tubman. She served in South Carolina, gathering information from informants behind Confederate lines. Besides being a legendary leader of the Underground Railroad, Tubman was also a nurse and a scout who led Union soldiers during several expeditions to the South. She is likely the first black woman in U.S. history to lead men to war. Tubman was buried with full military honors, though she was a civilian employed by the U.S. military.

The fiery abolitionist speaker Sojourner Truth participated in the Civil War. Truth organized fundraisers for black troops and nursed wounded soldiers confined to Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, DC. She worked with Clara Barton, the white nurse who organized the American Red Cross. “Aunt” Daphney Whitlow, a former slave from Virginia later employed by the Freedmen's Hospital, also served as a Civil War nurse.

Susie King Taylor, a native of Georgia, worked for the Union Army as a nurse and teacher to black soldiers. Charlotte Forten was another who taught black soldiers during the Civil War. Two others, Mary Chase and Mary Peake, opened schools for the freedmen, who were considered contrabands of war, in Alexander and Hampton, Virginia, respectively. Elizabeth Keckley supported the war effort in a slightly different way. Keckley, seamstress for the president's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, organized the Contraband Relief Association of Washington, DC, during the summer of 1862 to assist black Americans displaced by the war. Starting with forty members, the highly successful organization quickly expanded as it attracted the attention of black churches across the North. Keckley's Contraband Relief Association was the forerunner to twentieth-century black women's organizations designed to serve the military. Some of these organizations were the Negro War Relief, Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense, and women's auxiliaries to various military units. Modern research indicates that over 250 women actively served in the Civil War disguised as men. One such soldier was a black woman, Maria Lewis, who for eighteen months masqueraded as a white male with the Eighth New York Cavalry Regiment.

Evidence of black women's participation in military events in the West is sketchy, but there are at least two accounts of black women being present in confrontations with Native Americans. In the colonial period, Lucy Terry wrote a poem describing a battle between white settlers and Native Americans. The poem, “A Slave Report in Rhyme on the Indian Attack on Old Deerfield, August 25, 1746,” helped to establish Terry as the first published black woman in the United States. Over 125 years later, a black woman known as “Aunt Sally” Campbell traveled with George Custer before his defeat and death at the Battle of Little Big Horn (1876). She probably served as his cook and washerwoman. When Custer left the Dakota Territory to search for the Sioux in Montana, Campbell remained in South Dakota, where she became the first non-Indian woman to reside in the territory.

Much of the Spanish-American War (1898) took place in Cuba and in the Philippines. As Teddy Roosevelt made his famous charge up San Juan Hill, the Twenty-fourth Infantry, an all-black unit, provided cover. Additionally, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fifth Infantry were all-black units that participated in combat during the ten-week war. Though the United States won the war, thousands of black and white soldiers contracted a number of tropical diseases. In July 1898, the Surgeon General asked that a corps of black women be organized to nurse infirm black soldiers. Thirty-two black women were sent to care for black troops located at Camp Thomas, Georgia. These trailblazers were so well received Congress created a permanent Army Nurse Corps in 1901. The Navy Nurse Corps was established in 1908. Women had finally become an official part of the military, but ironically, black women were barred from both corps for another four decades.

However, black nurses were accepted into the Red Cross. The opportunities for black nurses to serve the military directly and through the Red Cross were important during the era of Jim Crow because there were very few black health care facilities and black nurses were rarely permitted employment in white hospitals.

The World Wars

During World War I, 650,000 black men served in the U.S. military, with approximately a third of these stationed in France. Nationwide hundreds of black nurses registered with the American Red Cross. In June 1918 the secretary of war issued a call for black nurses who were affiliated with the Red Cross to volunteer for overseas duty as well as for service at home. Among those who responded was Adah B. Thoms, the president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Many others served the more than 38,000 black troops confined to base hospitals in Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, and New Jersey. Elizabeth Miller was even assigned to a government military hospital in Alabama. Blacks had to fight for an official Red Cross charter just as they fought other racial oppression. In 1918 Tuskegee Institute in Alabama received the first Red Cross chapter awarded to African Americans. Bess Bolden Walcott, known as “the Red Cross Lady” was the executive secretary of the chapter from 1918–1951, leading the group during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War as the Red Cross aided soldiers and their families in time of war and peace, assisted with disaster relief, provided health care to ruralinhabitants, fed the needy, initiated blood and milk banks, and raised funds for war causes.

Black women were mobilized on the home front in various capacities. They took advantage of employment opportunities in the war industries, working at factories and plants in Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville (Kentucky), Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. More significantly, they were active leaders in volunteer work to support the war. Black clubwomen organized Hostess Houses in states with military bases and services. Under the leadership of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), founded in 1896, African American clubwomen had provided considerable support to their men and the nation in the Spanish-American War. During the short war, the group had investigated the conditions under which black soldiers served and made recommendations for improvement. In World War I their contributions were more significant as state and local club affiliates became involved to a greater extent in the war effort than ever before allowed. Martha F. White, who headed the state effort for black clubwomen in Iowa during World War I utilized the media, black churches, and her club to solicit aid that manifested itself mostly in canning jelly for black servicemen confined to hospitals, knitting various items of clothing, making flags, and serving as camp mothers to the 366th Infantry at Camp Dodge, Iowa. Statewide the group raised more than six thousand dollars in Liberty War Bonds. Mary McLeod Bethune, a later NACW president, worked with the Emergency Circle, Negro War Relief in Florida.

Black women in Colorado formed the Negro Women's Auxiliary War Council, a Negro Women's League for Service, and a Red Cross auxiliary. Alice Dugged Carey headed war relief work in Georgia under the umbrella of the Georgia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. Marion B. Wilkerson coordinated war work through the South Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs in her state, where the Phyllis Wheatley Club was already very active in war relief activities. The Circle of Negro War Relief and the Crispus Attucks Circle were organized in Philadelphia. Detroit had a Josephine Gray Colored Lady Knitters Club. Black women in New York formed a woman's auxiliary to the Fifteenth Regiment, an all-black unit that became the first New York State Guard. These and numerous other clubs knitted for soldiers, provided comfort kits, organized letter writing campaigns, cooked food, provided entertainment, and raised large sums of money. One of the most successful fundraisers by black women during World War I was staged in Savannah, Georgia, where 250,000 dollars was raised. Nationally, black women raised five million dollars for the war effort.

The United States entered World War II in December 1941. During the war and throughout the 1940s a number of developments improved opportunities for black women to participate in the armed forces. Pressure from civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the black press, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Black Cabinet,” combined with the military's changing needs to create opportunities for black women to serve their country. Perhaps the most important development was the creation of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in May 1942. The WAAC was incorporated into the regular U.S. Army in 1943 when it became the Women's Army Corps (WAC). Black and white women were accepted into both but segregation and discrimination prevailed. By the end of World War II more than four thousand black women had joined the WAC.

Willa Beatrice Brown c. 1941–1945, when she was in her thirties and was training pilots for the U.S. Army Air Force. She was the first woman commissioned as a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol.

National Archives; Joe McCary, Photo Response Studio

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The first black woman in U.S. history to be commissioned as an officer was a WAC, Charity Adams. Attaining the rank of major she was the highest-ranking black woman throughout World War II. Adams described her military experience in the book One Woman's Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC (1989). The second highest ranking woman during World War II was an Alabama native with a degree in Home Economics Education, Abbie Noel Campbell. Campbell was the Executive Officer to Company B of the Third Training Regiment. This company was the first all-black WAAC training unit in the U.S. military. Company B later was incorporated as part of the WAC Training Center at Ft. Des Moines. With Charity Adams serving as commander, Adams and Campbell were responsible for running the company. All WAAC and later WAC recruits came into this company for their basic training. In 1945 the company, along with eight hundred other black women went to Birmingham, England, to form the 6888th Central Postal Battalion. They were the first all-black female unit to deploy overseas.

There were thirty-four women beside Adams and Campbell in that first group of black women commissioned as military officers in the WAAC at Ft. Des Moines. Forty black women with college degrees were invited to join the six-week course but only thirty-nine showed up. While all four hundred white women invited to take the course completed it, only thirty-six black women received commissions as Second Lieutenants in the United States Army. This first graduating class included Charity Adams, Frances Alexander, Myrtle Anderson, Violet Askens, Varaneal Austin, Mary Bordeaux, Geraldine Bright, Annie Brown, Harriet Buhile, Abbie Campbell, Mildred Carter, Irma Cayton, Natalie Donaldson, Sarah Emmert, Geneva Ferguson, Ruth Freeman, Evelyn Green, Elizabeth Hampton, Vera Harrison, Dovey Johnson, Alice Jones, Mary Kearney, Mary Lewis, Ruth Lucas, Charline Mary, Ina McFadden, Mary Miller, Glendora Moore, Sarah Murphy, Doris Norrel, Mildred Osby, Gertrude Peebles, Corris Sherard, Jessie Ward, and Harriet West. The WAC also had a renowned black band. The 404th Army Service Band sang and performed nationwide at black and white military, civilian, and church functions.

The navy opened its doors to black women during World War II with a plan to raise black recruitment to 10 percent of the navy's total personnel and to form the Women's Reserve of the United States Navy, also called WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). In 1944 Bessie Garret became the first black woman accepted. Two black women, Frances Wills and Harriet Pickens, were among the first WAVES officers from Smith College. The Coast Guard admitted five black women during World War II. Among them were Olivia J. Hooker, who later became a clinical psychologist. The first black WAVES to enter the Hospital Corps were Ruth C. Issacs, Katherine Horton, and Inez Patterson.

The navy's plan fell short of its goals. The 10 percent black quota was never achieved during World War II and as of 1945 there were only fifty-six black WAVES. However, the navy became the first of the armed services to incorporate women into its active-duty force, where they worked alongside men. The WAC, in contrast, did not become part of the regular army until 1978. With the elimination of these separate auxiliaries, the navy and the army actually increased the total number of commissioned and enlisted women in active service.

Both the army and navy, however, continued to maintain a separate nurse corps. While both branches formed their nurse corps at the beginning of the twentieth century, black nurses were not admitted until World War II, due largely to the efforts of Nurse Mabel Keaton Staupers and Mary McLeod Bethune. The first black women to serve on active duty in the armed forces, in fact, were members of the Army Nurse Corps. The first group included fifty-six nurses, among them Lt. Della Raney and Lt. Susan Elizabeth Freeman who entered in 1941. Phyllis Mae Daley became the first black inducted into the Navy Nurse Corps in 1945. Considerably more black females served in the army Nurse Corps than the navy. Black nurses served in all-black military hospitals as well as in four general hospitals, regional hospitals, and at least nine station hospitals. Additionally, black women nurses served in Africa and in Europe during World War II.

Out of the Cold War and into the Twenty-first Century

The United States led the United Nations war in Korea during the early 1950s. Women who went to Korea were nurses with the Red Cross, the Army Nurse Corps, or the Navy Nurse Corps. Small numbers of other women served during the Korean War in Tokyo, Japan, and other places in the Far East Command far from the battle zone. When the Korean War began, there were about 29,000 total women in all branches of the military services. The numbers increased to nearly 100,000 by 1956. It is not known how many of these were black, but the great majority were white. One black soldier, I. C. Rochell, was on duty in Korea for more than seventeen months and reported seeing only one black woman, a nurse with the Red Cross. One of the lasting achievements of women during the Korean War was the formation of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Armed Services (DACOWITS), a group that still functions today in the interest of women in the military. One black woman who later served on this powerful committee was Clara Adams-Ender, a general in the Army Nurse Corps.

President Truman's executive order banning segregation in the armed forces in the late 1940s and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling against school segregation began the long process of eliminating racial separation in the United States. In the military, by 1973, toward the end of the Vietnam War, almost 10 percent of the American troops who served in Vietnam were black, including thousands of black women. From this point on, a series of new firsts signaled the gains made by black women. The Reverend Alice Henderson became the first woman chaplain in the country in 1974. During the same year, Jill Brown became the first black woman in U.S. military history to qualify as a pilot. In 1975 the Naval Medical Corps appointed its first black female physician, Donna P. Davis. Black women were being admitted to all military academies by 1976 when entrance requirements were the same for both sexes, except weight and height. During the 1970s the Reserved Officer Training Corp (ROTC) also opened its doors to women and in 1973 Linda Rochell and Mary Hudson became the first black women admitted to the ROTC program in the University of Missouri system. In March 1980 Hazel W. Johnson-Brown became the first black woman in U.S. history to hold the rank of general. Johnson, who also had a PhD, was Chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Two other black women generals promoted during the 1980s were General Sherian Cadoria in the army and General Clara Adams-Ender of the Army Nurse Corps. General Marcelite J. Harris, in the air force, received her rank in 1990. Mary Saunders of Texas also became an air force general.

Today, black women are allowed to join all areas of the U.S. armed services, except combat arms units (infantry, armor, artillery, and combat engineers). Women are attached to combat arms units, however, in support capacities. During operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Captain Cynthia Mosley commanded Alpha Company of the 24th Forward Support Battalion, 24th Infantry Division, while Captain Greta Garrett was the Headquarters Company Commander in an infantry unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. Mosley's company was responsible for refueling vehicles and resupplying troops located in the war zone. Moreover, a black woman, Lieutenant Phoebe Jeter, was instrumental in shooting down the first Scud missile in the Gulf War. As many as 40 percent of the thirty-five thousand female soldiers involved in the Gulf War were black, and three black women lost their lives.

September 11, 2001, will live in infamy for twenty-first- century Americans after the terrorist attacks that struck the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City left U.S. citizens in shock from traumatic scenes of victims jumping from the towering infernos, twin symbols of architectural superiority and industrial might tumbling to the ground. In response, President George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism, which in the ensuing years placed a number of African American men and women in the Middle East in a war zone, fighting Islamic and Arab peoples and cultures that are foreign to most Americans. In 2004 Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) introduced a bill to reinstate the draft. The chief of the Selective Service System also proposed that women register for the military draft. The director of the Selective Service further recommended the extension of the proposed draft age from twenty-five to thirty-four in order to bring in the critical skills, education, and experience required by a U.S. military that in all aspects and at all levels relies to a great extent on technology—from fighter planes to submarines to Army infantry and Marine footsoldiers, from supply and medical services to the combat arms. While the proposed draft was still under discussion as of early 2005, another gender-based military policy enforced by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld caused a furor among women when those stationed in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries were ordered to wear Muslim religious attire—long black cloaks called abayas—when off base, even though the majority of U.S. women in the armed forces are Christian. A white colonel, Martha McSally of the air force, successfully challenged this policy.

While thousands of black women have served in the Middle East as part of a war on terror that in 2004 looked to have no end, few stories are more poignant than that of Shoshana Johnson. A native of Panama who resided in El Paso, Texas, Johnson was a member of the 507th Maintenance Company from Ft. Bliss and is considered the first African American woman soldier to be a prisoner of war. She was held twenty-two days in captivity in Iraq after her military convoy of supply vehicles was ambushed. In the ambush, eleven American soldiers were killed and five taken prisoner, Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch among them. Johnson was shot and suffered beatings along with her male comrades, but after the Iraqis realized Johnson was female, the beatings stopped and she began to get slightly better treatment. Johnson and the male captives were rescued 13 April 2003 by the U.S. Marines.

See also Civil War; Revolutionary War; Vietnam; World War I; and World War II.

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