by Herb Boyd
Each day, as we have learned, brings new information about another first for Black Americans. It is something that may go on for generations. Last week, it was brought to my attention an obituary on Nancy Leftenant-Colon, the nurse who broke the U.S. Army’s color barrier. She was 104 when she died on Jan. 8 in Amityville, N.Y., on Long Island. Her death in a nursing facility was confirmed by her great-niece, Gilda Leftenant.
Several months before Leftenant-Colon joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order ending segregation in the military. Had this stroke of a president’s pen come seven years earlier, it would have saved her the ordeal and struggle of trying to serve her country. She tried to enlist in 1941, fresh out of nursing school, but her application was rejected because she was a Black woman. Undaunted, she continued her quest; only after the number of wounded soldiers reached a critical mass was she granted entry in the Army Reserve.
“She was one of just 500 Black nurses to serve during World War ll, out of a total of 50,000 — a result of government caps that kept thousands more Black women from serving,” Clay Risen wrote in the New York Times.
Born on Sept. 29, 1920, in Goose Creek, S.C., on a farm not far from Charleston, Nancy Carol Leftenant was one of 11 children whose parents were an enslaved mother and father. The family eventually moved to Long Island, where Nancy was known as “Lefty.” She graduated from the Lincoln School of Nursing in the Bronx, one of first institutions of its kind to open its doors to Black women. In a “Newsday” article in 1997, she recalled seeing a picture of an Army nurse with her cape: “She looked so good — straight and tall. I wanted to do my part.”
Her tenure in the Army began at a hospital in Lowell, Mass., that conducted an experiment in desegregation. After a brief stint there, she was transferred to Lockbourne Army Air Field in Columbia, Ohio, where she was attached to a unit of the 332nd Fighter Group, part of the famous Tuskegee Airmen. Ironically, one of her brothers — Samuel G. Leftenant — was a Tuskegee airman who was shot down over Austria and declared dead, although his remains were never found.
Leftenant-Colon was a model nurse, ever mindful that the smallest misstep might end her military career. She made sure her decorum and dress were immaculate, with nothing that might bring her special attention. This was especially true during her time in Alabama; even when in uniform, she had to abide by segregation laws. Once, while traveling through the South, a white woman spat in her face.
Five years after the U.S. Air Force was created in 1952, Leftenant-Colon joined and became a flight nurse. “I got to travel all over the world,” she said, including places in Europe and Asia. During various military events, she met a number of celebrities, such as Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe.
When she was commissioned an officer in the Army Nurse Corps, another first, it was global news. In 1955, she retired with the rank of major, and devoted much of her time in Amityville as a nurse in the school system. She also became an active volunteer with the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. In fact, she served as the president of the organization — another first for her. In 1960, she married Bayard Colon; he died in 1970.