Magee was a decorated surgeon and army man, and a veteran of the Great War.23 He was also known to be a staunch segregationist. On March 7, 1941, Magee met with a special health council for blacks that included Staupers, who insisted on the elimination of race-based restrictions on joining the Army Nurse Corps. The pressure continued beyond the meeting until Magee finally acquiesced, and the U.S. Army Nurse Corps accepted fifty-six black nurses in April 1941. But the admittance of black nurses came with a restricted quota and a continuation of segregation. “Negro nurses and other Negro professional personnel would only be called to serve in hospitals or wards devoted exclusively to the treatment of Negro soldiers,” said Magee, who emphasized that separate units were consistent with the racial policies and customs that American culture had adopted long before, and that black nurses could take it or leave it.

Undeterred, Mabel Staupers accepted the offer but kept pushing for racial inclusion in the army. Out of the initial group of fifty-six nurses, all were sent to segregated bases: half went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the other half to Camp Livingston, Louisiana. In 1942, sixty nurses were sent to Fort Huachuca.24

Elinor’s training didn’t begin on a good note. Hot, sweaty, and covered in grime, she stood silently in formation while one of the commanding officers announced that the uniforms hadn’t arrived yet, so for basic training the nurses would have to wear whatever they had brought. This meant they would have to complete their prerequisites and drills wearing either the clothes on their backs or the nursing school whites they had packed. The reason given for the delay was that the military uniforms were changing and there weren’t enough new ones to distribute. “Others said it was because the ‘black’ army always got what was left,” recalled Elinor years later.25

It was a blow to the nurses’ integrity—wearing civilian clothing for basic training at a military base located in the blazing hot desert. Part of the rank and prestige of representing the United States during wartime was wearing a military uniform. Elinor had already filled a scrapbook with photos of her in nursing school wearing her pristine white jacket-and-skirt ensembles. Now she would be running around a dusty base, drenched in sweat, wearing clothes from home. The army could have allowed the nurses to train in older uniforms until the new ones arrived—anything was better than nothing—but Elinor, along with her fellow nursing sisters, would quickly find out that they, as black women, would come last in every situation.