Dr. Martha Putney: Pioneer Service in the Women’s Army Corps

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Abstract

One of the unsung heroines of the Second World War, Dr. Martha Putney actively participated in the military as a commissioned officer. Reaching the rank of 1st Lieutenant, her resolve and resilience resulted in better treatment for African American women under her command. The Army assigned her to its basic training center in Des Moines, where she drilled female recruits. She later commanded a unit of black medical technicians at Gardiner General Hospital in Chicago. She encountered racial barriers and, with low-key persistence, pushed back against them. After leaving the military, she became an educator and who wrote pioneering works of history on black Americans in the military, especially her experiences as a Black woman (When The Nation Was In Need). She had a long teaching career at Bowie State College (now University) in Maryland, where she was the founding chairwoman of the history and geography department until 1974, and at Howard University in Washington, where she taught for nine years before retiring. Her book, Black Sailors, a study of black merchant seamen and whalers before the Civil War, was published in 1987. At her death, she was working on a history of black Americans in combat from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf war. This presentation places Martha Putney, part of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, within what historian calls the Long Civil Rights Movement and demonstrates her role as quiet but determined activist as well as prolific scholar—all while defying what was and was not expected of a black woman.

Author

• Janet Sims-Wood, Prince George's Community College