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given a chance for the first to prove their abilities. This was a movement supported by churches, labor and other groups. Results were gratifying. As the armed forces and hospitals opened their doors, Negro nurses responded. In World War I, only 18 Negro nurses had served in military hospitals. At the same time of Pearl Harbor there was not a single Negro nurse in any branch of the armed forces. But by the end of World War II there were 512 commissioned Negro nurses in the Army. Three units of theses nurses served overseas. In addition, more than 2,000 Negro student nurses enrolled in the U. S. Cadet Corps, a larger group than had ever before entered schools of nursing. Further, under the Bolton Act, Negro nurses received federal scholarships for refresher and postgraduate courses. The U.S. Public Health Service, the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, the Federal Security Agency and other federal agencies concerned with nursing approved Negro specialists as consultants, advisors and staff members. The wartime period marked a crumbling of barriers in the country at large. Nursing, like some of the other professions, followed this trend and is continuing to make progress. According to a "Survey of the Attitudes and Policies of Accredited Catholic Schools of Nursing in the United States Towards the Education of Negro Nurses" submitted at Catholic University in June, 1949, it was reported that of 376 Catholic schools of nursing, 48.2 per cent now admit Negro students. This report shows that in the ten-year period, 1939-1948, 40 schools revised their admission policy to admit members of all races, and 32 of these schools made this change during years 1947 and 1948. Even in the so-called "border" states, the report continues, 43.5 per cent of these schools admit Negro students. This compares to 55.1 per cent in the Eastern states, 53.6 per cent in the Mid-West states and 71.7 per cent in the Western states. In January, 1947, a survey made in New Jersey by the former Urban Colored Population Commission reported that 21 of 114 hospitals studied employed Negro nurses. Within a two-year period, hospital officials had so changed their policies and attitudes that 37 of the 85 hospitals surveyed by the New Jersey Division Against Discrimination employed Negro graduate nurses. [8] This trend indicates a tremendous advance in the thinking practices of hospital administration regarding the practicality of engaging Negro nurses. The technique of introducing professional Negro nurses was found in New Jersey no more difficult than methods employers have used in introducing minority group workers into industrial jobs, despite dire predictions to the contrary. Opportunities for Negro girls to become registered nurses in New Jersey institutions increased 100 percent during the two-year period from 1947-1949. The above survey indicated that 16 hospital schools of nursing, out of a total of 45, enrolled Negro students by 1949. This encouraging trend forecasts greater employment gains for Negro professional registered nurses while opening up a vast reservoir of student and graduate nurses in a field that has experienced serious shortages. What this trend means was commented upon by The New York Times in an editorial on July 19, 1950, referring to the study made by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on the concept of race. Said the Times: "The conclusion that there is no basic superiority or inferiority due to race confirms the expectations of students, but as the world learned to its cost during the Nazi era, this is a truth that needs popularization...To eliminate 'race' as a scientific term is a step toward ending it as a myth that dictators and movements use as political instruments to gain and exercise power." That American people recognized this truth from the patriotic service which the Negro nurse, like all nurses, rendered to this country during World War II. [[image]]
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Reopened for Editing 2023-05-26 21:23:30
Fixed minor typos and moved image description to notes.
[[image: A nurse of color and white nurse working side by side in what is assumed to be a hospital.]]