About Mabel K. Staupers
Mabel Keaton Staupers (February 27, 1890 – September 30, 1989) was a Barbadian born American pioneer of the nursing profession. Being faced with racial discrimination after graduating nursing school, Staupers became an advocate for racial equality in nursing in the United States. She is best known for her leadership in the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) and for helping end the racial restrictions against black nurses in the United States military during World War II. Staupers also did work in public health, caring for African American tuberculosis patients in Harlem. In 1961, she published a book on the integration of African American nurses in the United States. == Early life and education == Staupers was born February 27, 1890, in Barbados, West Indies. In 1903, at the age of thirteen, she emigrated to the United States, Harlem, New York, with her parents, Pauline and Thomas Doyle and received American citizenship in 1917. She began attending Freedmen's Hospital School of Nursing in Washington, DC, in 1914, where she graduated with honors in 1917. After graduation, like most graduate nurses, she worked as a private duty nurse. == Early career and public health == While working as a private nurse in Washington, DC and New York, Staupers helped establish the Booker T. Washington Sanatorium, in 1920. It was the first inpatient center of its kind in Harlem and was founded to care for African Americans with tuberculosis, at a time when other hospitals refused Black medical experts privileges or staffing positions.
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