Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sisters

Pia Marie Winters Jordan's new book focuses on the long-untold story of the Black nurses at Tuskegee Army Airfield, where they provided health care for Tuskegee Airmen.

Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sisters focuses on a four-year period from 1942 to 1946 during World War II when up to twenty-eight women from the Army Nurse Corps staffed the station hospital on the base where the future Tuskegee Airmen were undergoing basic and advanced pilot training. These women were African Americans, graduates of nursing schools throughout the country, registered nurses, and lieutenants in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. They were military officers, and the pilot cadets saluted them.

“Jordan highlights the role of Black women as World War II military officers, a subject that has long been neglected. Her description of individual Tuskegee Airmen nurses reminds readers that the story of World War II was about not just groups but individuals, each one with her own story, each as concerned with equal rights and opportunities as any of the other Tuskegee Airmen, and each dedicated to victory for the United States over its enemies and the enemies of freedom.” —Daniel Haulman, retired USAF historian and author of The Tuskegee Airmen: An Illustrated History