Born in Barbados in 1890, Mabel Keaton Staupers received her nursing degree from the Freedmen’s Hospital School of Nursing in Washington, D.C. Although she started off as a private nurse, Staupers would establish herself as a leading medical professional specializing in the recruitment of black nurses for various hospital staffing and teaching positions across the country. She was so diligent at her job that African American physicians contacted her directly to request nurses for various employment opportunities.

She was a mastermind at networking and coalition building, and her efforts were especially noticed by the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, and after working fifteen years in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Staupers headed to New York to be the NACGN’s new executive secretary in 1934.21

Staupers was well aware of the American Nurses Association’s refusal to admit black nurses in their southern chapters. But she helped pressure the Red Cross to make an exception for southern black nurses who were members of the NACGN and who met all the other qualifications. Her real goal was to make sure black nurses received the same opportunities as white nurses, particularly in serving the military.

The rejection letters from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps enraged Staupers. The curriculum at black nursing schools was comparable to the curriculum at nursing schools that admitted only whites, so it was clear that racism was driving the military’s decision. The fact that the American government would try to fight a war against fascism while subjecting its own citizens to racism was not lost on Staupers, who had a solid relationship with the top civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Council of Negro Women. She decided that African American nurses deserved to be treated far better, and in 1940 she decided to directly confront the powers that be, Surgeon General of the Army James Magee.

Staupers mobilized an army of supporters, including the NAACP, civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, black newspapers, white philanthropists, Congresswoman Frances Bolton, who was a longtime supporter of nurses, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Staupers even sent telegrams to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which she would do until his death, urging him to allow black nurses to serve their country and “give Negro nurses the opportunity for full service as American citizens.”22 There wasn’t a door she didn’t knock on in an attempt to gain support and momentum for her cause.