During the period in which the bill was debated, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the esteemed African American minister from Harlem, was vocal about discrimination against black nurses by the U.S. military. “It is absolutely unbelievable that in times like these, when the world is going forward, that there are leaders in our American life who are going backward. It is further unbelievable that these leaders have become so blindly and unreasonably un-American that they have forced our wounded men to face the tragedy of death rather than allow trained nurses to aid because these nurses’ skins happen to be of a different color.”8 The amendment passed the House almost unanimously. But it stalled in the Senate without any explanation given and was eventually shelved.

The conscription of nurses never occurred—enough of them volunteered to care for the high numbers of wounded men returning from war. But the disregard of black nurses continued.

Undeterred, Mabel Staupers carried on and continued to lobby for an amendment that prohibited the discrimination of black nurses in the military. But the morale of African American nurses who were currently serving in the army was reaching a record low. Staupers visited First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at her New York apartment to discuss her plight. Although Mrs. Roosevelt made no promises, black nurses started to see some improvement in their experiences beginning in early 1945. In some instances black nurses were finally transferred out of POW camps.9 In an anonymous letter to Mabel Staupers dated February 14, 1945, a chief nurse wrote, “I have heard very good news about the new assignments of colored nurses. They are no longer assigned only to P.W. camps. As you no doubt know those nurses who serve six months at these camps are rotated now to non P.W. camps.”10