Part 3: Integration to Today

For decades, African-Americans serving in the U.S. military, including the medical system, worked under a separate, but most decidedly, unequal status. Despite showing bravery on the battlefield and perseverance in hospital wards from the Civil War to World War II, African-Americans in military medicine were not treated as equals to their white counterparts. But in 1948, with the stroke of a pen, President Harry S. Truman would change that, at least in principle. Executive Order 9981 stated that, “There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin,” and ended segregated units. African-Americans were able to serve in integrated hospitals, but training and living quarters lagged behind.

By the Korean War, between 1950 and 1953, African-American women had integrated every military service, first in training, and later with barracks and living quarters. Army Capt. Evelyn Deck recalled the integration of quarters while she served as a nurse during the Korean War. Nurse barracks in Germany integrated in 1951; two years later, in 1953, nurses’ quarters at an Army hospital in Michigan integrated. Despite the delay in housing, African-American servicewomen continued to endeavor. Hospitalman Josephine Delores Rosa became the first African-American female corpsman to serve aboard a ship, the USS Maurice Rose, in 1951.

Army Col. Clotilde Bowen became the first black woman physician to hold a military commission in 1955. She served as the Army’s chief psychiatrist in Vietnam in 1970, the Army’s only black woman physician at the time, according to Judith Bellafaire, chief historian, Women’s Memorial Foundation. In 1977, Bowen became the first woman to command a U.S. military hospital when the Army assigned her to Hawley Army Hospital at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, in 1977.

African-American medics and nurses served in the Vietnam War, like Air Force Capt. Olivia Theriot, who remained in the Air Force Nurse Corps. She retired as a lieutenant colonel.

Many were honored for their valor. Army medic Spc. Lawrence Joel received the Medal Honor for treating his fellow soldiers  when they were ambushed in by Viet Cong forces in Vietnam in 1965. Despite his own injuries, which included multiple gunshot wounds to his legs, Joel dragged himself over the battlefield and succeeded in treating 13 more men before his medical supplies ran out, and even after that, improvised materials to save more. Joel would survive and become the first living African-American since the Spanish-American War to receive the nation’s highest award for valor. Army Col. Marie L. Rodgers was a major when she volunteered to serve in Vietnam. The nurse received the Bronze Star from President Lyndon B. Johnson in a White House ceremony in December 1967 for her distinguished service in connection with group operations against a hostile force in Vietnam. As a first lieutenant Army nurse in 1970, Diane M. Lindsey received the Soldier’s Medal for heroism. 

On Aug. 10, 1970, Dr. Joseph Alexander led a team of five other transplant surgeons at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, D.C., to perform the Army’s first kidney transplant. He came to WRAMC as an Army major and became chief of the Organ Transplantation Service, serving as a lieutenant colonel until 1971. In 1973, John D. Robinson became the first African-American psychologist in the U.S. Air Force.

In 1978, Joan Bynum became the first African-American captain in the Navy Nurse Corps. She was also the first black female officer to attain the rank of captain. The Navy commissioned David Lawrence Kennedy as its first African-American uniformed social worker in January 1980. Kennedy retired as a captain in 2004.

Army Brig. Gen. Hazel W. Johnson-Brown became the first African-American woman promoted to brigadier general  in American military history. She served as the 16th chief of the Army Nurse Corps from September 1979 until August 1983. In 1993, retired Air Force flight nurse Maj. Gen. Irene Trowell-Harris was selected to become the first black female general in the National Guard.

In September 2007, retired Vice Adm. Adam Robinson, the first African-American physician to command the National Naval Medical Center, became the first African-American surgeon general of the Navy and chief, U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. In November of the same year, Navy Master Chief Laura A. Martinez became the first African-American and second woman to serve as force master chief and director of the Hospital Corps.

In June 2013, Maj. Gen. Nadja West became the first female African-American major general in U.S. Army Medical Command. The modern-day achievements of West, Robinson and Martinez honor the long, legacy of African-Americans who fought to serve their country in military medicine.

Upon receiving her second star West said, “If anything at all, I hope I can be an inspiration to any one or any group that has not seen themselves in certain positions. We all want to see people who look like us doing certain things to give us inspiration. Hopefully, I can inspire someone to be able to say, ‘I can do that'.”

This article is part of a series originally appearing in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center newspaper, Journal.