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Obituaries|Nancy Leftenant-Colon, 104, Dies; Army Nurse Broke a Color Barrier
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/obituaries/nancy-leftenant-colon-dead.html
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After years of being barred from a segregated military, she became the first Black nurse in the regular U.S. armed forces. She was later an Air Force officer.
Jan. 24, 2025, 7:20 p.m. ET
Nancy Leftenant-Colon, a granddaughter of enslaved people who in 1948 became the first Black nurse to serve in the regular U.S. armed forces, died on Jan. 8 in Amityville, N.Y., on Long Island. She was 104.
Her great-niece Gilda Leftenant confirmed the death, in a nursing facility.
Mrs. Leftenant-Colon joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in February 1948, several months before President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order desegregating the armed forces.
It was the culmination of a seven-year struggle. She had first tried to enlist in 1941, fresh out of nursing school, but was told the military did not accept Black women. She kept trying, and in 1945, with the flow of wounded servicemen from overseas combat near its peak, she was accepted into the reserves.
She was one of just 500 Black nurses to serve during World War II, out of a total of 50,000 — a result of government caps that kept thousands more Black women from serving.
Mrs. Leftenant-Colon began her service at a hospital in Lowell, Mass. Though she served in a segregated unit, the hospital itself was integrated, part of what was called a military experiment in desegregation.
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