Article About Aileen Bertha Stewart
c. 1918
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This article comes from a Red Cross file on Aileen Bertha Cole. Cole was one of 18 African American nurses recruited for military service through the Red Cross during World War I.
While more than 100 Black doctors and 12 dentists served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the war, not a single nurse was admitted. On November 13, 1918, at the age of 24, Cole received a letter from the Red Cross stating that the "Surgeon General has called for a limited number of colored nurses, through the Red Cross to be available for service about December 1." Cole took her oath of office on November 29th.
Cole had trained at the Freedmen’s Hospital School of Nursing at Howard University in 1917. Not long after, she passed her state board exams and set her sights on becoming a nurse in the Army Nurse Corps. But while Black men were permitted to serve, under segregated conditions, in the military, the Red Cross and U.S. military cited a lack of "appropriate" quarters for not admitting Black women.
Stewart enrolled with the Red Cross and began her career caring for miners with influenza in West Virginia during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. She would visit homes to monitor health and treat more than 20 families. At this time, most private hospitals still excluded Black patients and hospital staff. When hospitals began to be inundated with flu patients, integration of medical professionals expanded. Only then did opportunities for Black nurses become more available.
After she was recruited for military service through the Red Cross in November 1918, Cole and eight others were sent to Camp Sherman, Ohio; the remaining nine went to Camp Grant, Illinois. They were housed in segregated quarters. Their directive was to care for locals infected with influenza. As the pandemic began to subside, injured soldiers were returning from the European Theater. The nurses changed course and tended to those wounded.
The Army Nurse Corps discharged all 18 nurses in August 1919, but their service set the precedent for future nurses. Five hundred Black nurses went on to serve in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II.
After Cole's Army discharge in August of 1919, she took employment at the newly opened Booker T. Washington Sanitarium. This facility was among the first in the country to treat tuberculosis in African Americans. She went on to work as a public health nurse in New York for 34 years. In 1956, she relocated to Seattle, Washington, to work at Swedish Hospital from 1956 to 1962. She continued her service with the Red Cross by teaching home health and volunteering in youth programs. At the age of 68, she completed her Bachelor’s of Science in public health nursing from the University of Washington.
This primary source comes from the Collection ANRC: Records of the American National Red Cross.
National Archives Identifier:
2662312Full Citation: Article About Aileen Bertha Stewart; c. 1918; Stewart, Aileen Bertha nee Cole; Historical Nurse Files, ca. 1916 - ca. 1959; Collection ANRC: Records of the American National Red Cross; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/aileen-bertha-stewart, March 29, 2024]