Staupers, Mabel Keaton (Mabel Doyle Keaton), 1890-1989
Dates
- Existence: 1890-1989
Biographical Statement
Mabel Keaton Staupers, a long-time executive officer of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, worked over several decades to desegregate the nursing profession.
Born in Barbados in 1899, she moved with her family to Harlem in 1903. Staupers attended New York public schools and graduated from Freedmen's Hospital School of Nursing in 1917, and by 1922 was working as a nurse and administrator in Harlem. In the 1920s, Staupers conducted a survey of Harlem to assess the public health needs of that community. Around this time, she served as the executive secretary of the Harlem Committee of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association.
Staupers joined the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1916 while still a nursing student, and she began leading that group in 1934. Under her leadership, the NACGN vastly expanded its membership. One goal for Staupers and her peers was the total integration of the American Nurses Association. To this end, Staupers helped created the NACGN Advisory Council, which, comprised of leaders in various health organizations and several prominent philanthropists, pressured White national organizations to be more inclusive. When the United States became involved in World War II, this campaign was fought on a different front.
Staupers coordinated a campaign to pressure the military to change their policy to accept Black nurses; initially, the War Department relented with a strict quota while maintaining segregated camps, which Staupers protested. Staupers lobbied the surgeon general of the army and members of Congress to lift barriers to fully inclusion of African American nurses, and met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 to discuss these barriers to full participation of Black nurses. When the surgeon general of the army announced that due to a shortage of nurses a draft for nurses might become necessary, Staupers pronounced that the army should instead recruit Black nurses willing to serve. Staupers protested the proposed nurses draft, and the army soon relented, adopting a race-blind recruitment policy. Staupers was soon successful with similar efforts involving the American Nurses Association, and she considered her race relations work done, stepping down as the executive secretary of the NACGN.
Staupers proved a great coalition builder, and this work was widely recognized with her receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1951, the same year the NACGN ceased to exist. However, Staupers continued to work in the profession, and became a member of the Board of Directors for the fully-integated American Nurses Association. In 1961, Staupers published a history of this struggle, No Time for Prejudice: The Story of the Integration of Negroes in Nursing in the United States. She died in Washington, DC, in 1989.