During World War I, American women served as military nurses through several avenues which had been established after the Spanish-American War, when women served as contract nurses with the military as well as in other volunteer groups. After leading the contract nursing effort during the Spanish-American War, Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee (Section 1, Grave 526B) played a key role in the creation of a permanent nursing service for the military. The lessons she and her colleagues learned in that conflict led to the establishment of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901 and the Navy Corps in 1908, as well as the Army Nurse Corps Reserve. This reserve would function as a contingent of qualified nurses available for military service in addition to those already serving with the military. Under the leadership of Jane Delano (Section 21, Grave 6), the Red Cross Nursing Service became the official nursing reserve force of the military and supplied additional nurses for wartime service. While head of the Red Cross Nursing Service, Delano simultaneously served as the Army Nurse Corps’ superintendent from 1909 to 1912. Through these main organizations, thousands of women served as nurses during World War I. The Army Nurse Corps reached an estimated peak strength of over 21,000 by the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918.
Opportunities for women to serve as nurses, however, remained racially limited due to prejudice and the norms of segregation in the United States at the time. Eager to support the war effort, trained and qualified African American nurses wanted to serve as nurses but encountered many obstacles to their participation. In 1917, the American Red Cross reversed its previous policy of prohibiting African American nurses from enrollment, but took no immediate action to bring any African American nurses into the organization. After pressure from various African American leaders and organizations, the onset of the influenza pandemic eventually led, after the signing of the Armistice, to the enrollment of just 18 African American nurses in the Army Nurse Corps through the American Red Cross. These trailblazing 18 women became the first African American women to ever serve in the Army Nurse Corps.