Mabel Keaton Staupers

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Mabel Keaton Staupers (born February 27, 1890 in Barbados , † November 29, 1989 in Washington, DC ) was an African American nurse. She fought to end racial discrimination against black nurses within the United States Armed Forces and paved their way into the United States Army Nurse Corps . Staupers also changed the discriminatory attitude of other educational institutions as well as in organizations and institutions of care.

Mabel Keaton Staupers (née Doyle) was born in Barbados on February 27, 1890 . She moved to Harlem , New York City with her mother Pauline Doyle when she was 13 . Their father Thomas followed them a few years later. Staupers attended Freedmen's Hospital School of Nursing in Washington, DC; In 1917, she received both American citizenship and a recognized nurse qualification. In the same year she married James Max Keaton, from whom she later divorced. While working as a private nurse in New York and Washington DC, Staupers helped set up and organize the Booker T. Washington Sanatorium for black tuberculosis sufferers . This hospital was one of the few that allowed colored doctors to treat patients. From 1920 to 1922 she worked in the hospital management and until 1934 took over the management of the Harlem Tuberculosis Committee .

From 1934 Staupers took over the management of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) until she took over the presidency in 1949. Together with the president of the NACGN Estelle Masse Riddlen , she fought for the full integration of the colored sisters into professional care and the predominantly white professional associations. In 1935 Staupers took part in the founding event of the National Council of Negro Women , organized by Mary McLeod Bethune .

During World War II , the US Armed Forces had a strict quota of only 48 African American nurses in the United States Army Nurse Corps; these were also subject to racial segregation within the corps. To change this and to draw public attention to the problem, Staupers organized events and demonstrations in which both black and white care organizations participated. The First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt finally met with Staupers in 1944 and asked her to describe the difficulties the colored nurses were faced with. On January 10, 1945, the US Armed Forces finally changed their policy of racial discrimination and segregation and opened the ranks of the Armed Forces Nurse Corps to all nurses regardless of skin color. Staupers documented this struggle in the book No Time for Prejudice: A Story of the Integration of Negroes in Nursing in the United States ( No Time for Prejudice: A History of the Integration of Negroes in the Care of the United States ). The American Nurses Association (ANA) followed this decision of the armed forces and allowed African American nurses to become members from 1948.

In 1951, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for her efforts to end discrimination against colored carers . Staupers died on November 29, 1989 in Washington DC of pneumonia. She was posthumously inducted into the ANA Hall of Fame in 1996.

literature

  • Black Past: Mabel Keaton Staupers (1890-1989) (English) Retrieved June 14, 2020
  • Harriet R. Feldman, G. Rumay Alexander et al .: Nursing Leadership: A Concise Encyclopedia SPRINGER PUB, 2012. ISBN 978-0826121769 p. 403 Mabel Keaton Staupers (1890-1989) (English)
  • Darlene Clark Hine: Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Indiana University Press, 1994. Staupers, Mabel Keaton (1890-1989) pp. 1106-1108. ISBN 0-253-32774-1 (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Darlene Clark Hine: Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Indiana University Press, 1994. Staupers, Mabel Keaton (1890-1989) pp. 1106-1108. ISBN 0-253-32774-1 (English)
  2. ↑ Chicago Tribune: Ted Gregory: Forgotten war nurses keep their story alive May 28, 2001. Retrieved June 14, 2020
  3. ↑ New York Times: Mabel Staupers, 99, Leader for Nurses, Dies, accessed June 14, 2020
  4. ↑ Nursingworld: Hall of Fame Inductees 1996-1998 (English) accessed on June 14, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Staupers, Mabel Keaton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American nurse
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Barbados
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1989
Place of death Washington, DC