America’s military women have long forged new paths and opened opportunities for American women to contribute to the betterment of our nation. One such group of trailblazing women, known as the “Sacred 20,” became the first women to serve in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, established in 1908. Three superintendents of the Navy Nurse Corps, and at least four other members of the Sacred 20, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC).
The creation of the Navy Nurse Corps culminated a years-long struggle to allow women to serve as Navy nurses. After the U.S. Army’s successful use of contract nurses during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Congress passed a bill in 1901 to create the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Surgeon General of the Navy Presley Marion Rixey (buried in Section 2) strongly believed that the Navy should also have a dedicated nursing corps staffed by highly-trained female nurses, and he campaigned for one to be created.
At the time, nursing was one of just a handful of professional occupations open to women—who could become nurses by attending a training school, often located at hospitals, where they learned specialized skills in a formal setting. Nursing offered women the opportunity to professionalize what, previously, had often been an informal, voluntary activity. Now, with training schools, examinations and licenses, female nurses formed a new community of professional women whose abilities far surpassed those of men doing nursing tasks in the Navy. Through nursing, women propelled themselves out of the domestic sphere and into the workforce. At the same time that women were fighting for the right to vote, nurses—and other women—tried to expand women’s roles in society.
Rixey’s plan for a Navy Nurse Corps finally became a reality in 1908. To be accepted for service, female nurses needed to have graduated from a hospital training school with professional qualifications and be deemed physically and morally fit for service. They received the same pay and benefits as women in the Army Nurse Corps, but they also struggled with the same challenges as the Army nurses. The military denied both groups of nurses actual rank and authority over the men in their care. This confusing status meant that nurses were neither officers nor enlisted service members, and they did not receive equal status to their male counterparts. The Navy Nurse Corps was not designated full military rank until February of 1944.