Nursing Civil Rights

Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps

Charissa J. Threat

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780252080777, 9780252039201
• eBook ISBN: 9780252097249
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Nursing Civil Rights, Charissa J. Threat investigates the parallel battles against occupational segregation by African American women and white men in the U.S. Army.

As Threat reveals, both groups viewed their circumstances with the Army Nurse Corps as a civil rights matter. Each conducted separate integration campaigns to end the discrimination they suffered. Yet their stories defy the narrative that civil rights struggles inevitably arced toward social justice. Threat tells how progressive elements in the campaigns did indeed break down barriers in both military and civilian nursing. At the same time, she follows conservative threads to portray how some of the women who succeeded as agents of change became defenders of exclusionary practices when men sought military nursing careers. The ironic result was a struggle that simultaneously confronted and reaffirmed the social hierarchies that nurtured discrimination.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Politics of Intimate Care: Gender, Race, and Nursing Work
• 2. “The Negro Nurse—A Citizen Fighting for Democracy”: African Americans and the Army Nurse Corps
• 3. Nurse or Soldier? White Male Nurses and World War II
• 4. An American Challenge: Defense, Democracy, and Civil Rights after World War II
• 5. The Quality of a Person: Race and Gender Roles Re-Imagined?
• Conclusion
• Appendix A. Facts about Negro Nurses and the War
• Appendix B. Male Nurse Population, 1943
• Appendix C. African American Nurse Population, 1940
• Appendix D. Male and African American Nurse Population, 1950
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index