Elinor Powell

Elinor Powell (1921-2005) was an African-American nurse in World War II who defied anti-miscegenation laws by marrying a German prisoner of war.

Background

Powell was raised in Milton, Massachusetts, where her grandmother moved after she escaped slavery as a teen, travelling north via the Underground Railroad.[1] Powell's father served in WW1, which later inspired her to also join the army as a nurse.

Career and relationship

In 1944 Powell joined the army and completed her basic training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the largest military installation for black soldiers and nurses.[2] Powell was one of only 300 nurses allowed to join the Army Nurse Corps under strict quotas.[2] Powell worked as a 2nd Lt. in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps based at POW Camp Florence, Arizona, where she was to required to help German soldiers, including Nazis captured in Europe and Northern Africa, as black nurses were prohibited from treating white GIs until the last years of the war.[1] Originally Camp Florence employed white nurses, but they were replaced with black nurses to discourage fraternisation, and many of the camps enforced strict segregation policies.

Despite this, Powell fell in love with a German prisoner, Frederick Albert, who was a Luftwaffe medic from Vienna who had been captured in Italy.[3] This was incredibly risky, as such a relationship could get her court-martialled. Powell met Albert in the mess hall, where he was assigned to work as a cook. Just before Albert was released and deported in April 1946, they conceived a son, enabling Albert to obtain a visa and return the following year to marry in New York.[4] Interracial marriage was permitted in New York, but in most of the US it would remain prohibited for another 20 years. They moved to Boston but experienced discrimination due to being in an interracial marriage, and so moved to Germany but this was no better, so returned to settle in Connecticut. Albert passed away in 2001 at age 75, followed by Elinor in 2005 aged 85, they were succeeded by their two sons, Steven and Chris. Chris became a trumpeter with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.[1]

In 2018 the book titled "Enemies in Love" by Alexis Clark was written about the relationship of Elinor Powell and Frederick Albert.[5]

References
  1. Linge, Mary Kay (19 May 2018). "The secret romance of a black Army nurse and Nazi POW". New York Post.
  2. Clark, Alexis. "The Army's First Black Nurses Were Relegated to Caring for Nazi Prisoners of War". Smithsonian Magazine.
  3. NTREH, NII (9 December 2019). "How a 1940s black nurse married a WW II Nazi soldier against American and German views on race". Face2Face Africa.
  4. Feliciano, Ivette (17 June 2018). "'They didn't let racism win' -- The story of an interracial couple on opposite sides of WWII". PBS NewsHour.
  5. Clark, Alexis (2018). Enemies in love : a German POW, a black nurse, and an unlikely romance. New York, NY. ISBN 978-1620971864.
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