World War I

“Gorgas and his colleagues did not recruit African American physicians and barred women physicians from the army entirely. The army awarded medical commissions to only 360 of the 3,000 to 4,000 African American physicians, surgeons, and dentists in the country, and required some of them to serve as rank-and-file infantry privates instead of in their fields of expertise. . . [The OTSG] established a segregated training camp for them at Fort Des Moines, Iowa . . . African-American dental and medical officers treated only Black troops, often with interior equipment and supplies” (Byerly I, 247-248).