After the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, African American nurses tried to enroll in the Red Cross, since that was the procurement agency for the Army Nurse Corps. They were all rejected because they weren’t members of the American Nursing Association, which wouldn’t admit them. Every door seemed to be closed. Thoms began a lively correspondence with Jane Delano, chair of the Red Cross, to explain the impossible position black nurses were in: all of the army’s required memberships involved organizations that discriminated against African Americans. After a back-and-forth about the challenges that black nurses faced despite their qualifications, Delano approached the surgeon general of the U.S. Army about the situation. The army had the final say on the enrollment of African American nurses, and the answer given was no.

A health crisis in 1918 inadvertently opened the door. The flu pandemic that year required a constant supply of replacement nurses, which persuaded the surgeon general to finally authorize the use of a handful of black nurses in World War I. That seemed like a major accomplishment to African American nurses at the time, and the NACGN assumed they had made official inroads into the military.18

A year after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 the United States began an aggressive war preparedness program. The U.S. Army Nurse Corps knew the war would require more nurses, and they set out to expand their recruiting services. Black nurses became energized by the urgent calls from Congress, local leaders, and media outlets encouraging nurses to join the army. The NACGN alerted its membership to enroll in the Red Cross, still a required affiliation for enlistment in the nurse corps, but once again black nurses faced a serious problem.19 African American nurses from fifteen southern states still could not join the American Nurses Association, which was a qualification to enroll in the Red Cross. Nothing had changed in twenty years. The U.S. Army still did not want black nurses to serve. Even black nurses in the North who were able to join the Red Cross were rejected, receiving a letter that read: “Your application for appointment to the Army Nurse Corps cannot be given favorable consideration as there are no provisions in Army regulations for the appointment of colored nurses in the Corps.”20

Elinor would not have been able to enlist when she did if someone hadn’t challenged the army, and the NACGN couldn’t have chosen a better leader to take on the task than a stout, bespectacled West Indian woman named Mabel Staupers.