I thought it would be an easy statistic to find. I haven’t been able to find any statistic on the number of African American doctors recruited to service in the US armed forces in WWII (1941-1945)
Kimstu
April 29, 2024, 9:53pm
2
About 500 African American nurses served in WWII, apparently.
Here’s a 1943 article on the ongoing fight for inclusion of African American doctors among armed forces medical personnel, but of course it doesn’t cover the whole period you’re interested in.
The history of the fight by the National Medical Association, the organized spokesman for the more than 4,000 Negro physicians in the United States, for the participation and integration of the Negro medical profession into the armed forces, prior to and after Pearl Harbor, is an interesting chapter
A 1974 report on “Medical Training in World War II” says:
Race and religion presented special problems. Because of its policy of honoring the admissions of schools which had accepted students for classes beginning in 1943 and 1944, the Army was unable to reject Negroes who had been accepted by predominately white schools. This could be done only when the Army had full control of freshman vacancies. At the same time, many schools were worried that Army control of vacancies, and the Army procedure of assigning students by number instead of by name, would lead to unwanted integration. Col. Francis M. Fitts, MC, Director of Military Training, ASF, explained these problems and their solution at The Surgeon General’s conference with chiefs of the medical branches of the service commands in mid-1943:
Negro trainees now accepted by Chicago or Harvard will be sent to those schools by which they had been accepted. When Chicago and Harvard reserve for the Army a certain percentage of vacancies we will not send Negro trainees there. That has been the point which has given some concern to some schools and is one which you cannot decide absolutely or say that an order will not be made; but if it is made, it will be rectified.
As a result of these policies, enrollment in medicine and dentistry at Howard University and Meharry College, Nashville, Tenn., was limited exclusively to Negroes, and Negroes were not selected for other colleges unless they had already been admitted by the individual school. In any case, enrollment of Negroes was to be limited, because the Medical Department did not plan to expand its use of these officers, and needed only about 40 replacements a year for those already on active duty. With about 380 Negro medical students already enrolled in the Medical Administrative Corps, the Medical Department had a 10-year supply of replacements and believed it could not justify extensive training of this racial group. A small group of trainees were sent to Negro colleges late in 1944, but reservations for 1945 were canceled. Enrollment at the College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, Calif., a Seventh-Day Adventist School, was similarly limited to members of that faith.
Thank you Kimstu. Outstanding find!
