ALTHOUGH THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE LISTED Frederick’s official name as Friedrich, at some point the couple decided to Americanize his name, and he became known to everyone as Frederick or by his nickname, Frika. Elinor and Frederick’s relationship was now out in the open for the first time since they had met. Emotions ran high as everyone tried to adjust to postwar life, but Elinor took comfort in being a married woman. She was unfazed that Frederick was white, and she wanted to put behind her the discrimination that she had endured in the army.

For the nurses who remained in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after the war, a moment of progress arrived at last. The determination and activism of Mabel Staupers, the NAACP and other civil rights groups, the Negro press, and Eleanor Roosevelt eventually paid off when President Truman banned segregation in the U.S. Army and Navy in 1948. Executive Order 9981 stated, “There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”1

A few years later, in 1951, Mabel Staupers dissolved the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and folded its membership into the American Nurses Association, the very organization that for decades had denied black nurses entry. Staupers felt the goal of the NACGN had been met now that the ANA had to admit all qualifying nurses regardless of race and now that, by law, black women were able to serve in the U.S. Army and Navy without any quotas or restrictions.2

American society, however, had not evolved as quickly and was not prepared to deal with a couple like Elinor and Frederick. They did not exactly fade into the background: she was a tall, statuesque African American woman and a former army nurse; he was a handsome, reserved former German soldier. After marrying in New York, they decided to move to Boston, where Elinor thought they’d have a better chance to find affordable housing and low-skilled employment for Frederick.

They chose Roxbury, a no-frills working-class neighborhood populated mostly by families crammed into small apartments. The housing market was tight with the return of veterans and the baby boom. But Elinor and Frederick faced an even greater challenge. There were plenty of people who still harbored bitter feelings about the war and who thought all Germans were “Nazis” or “Krauts.” Moreover, some landlords weren’t thrilled about renting an apartment to a German with a black wife and mixed-race baby. Elinor and Frederick would end up moving frequently, mostly because neighbors complained to landlords about living next to them and threatened to move.3

Elinor and Frederick stayed the longest in an attic apartment where they met an African American dentist, Edward Allen, who had served in the U.S. Navy and who would become a good family friend. Allen’s tiny apartment was across from theirs, and he remembered them as a loving couple who kept to themselves.4