1935–1936: (Nursing as Nationalist Care and the Ethiopian Princess — Throughout the Ethiopian-Italian War the LFAS Cheering Fellow Women Patriots, When Haile…

1935–1936: (Nursing as Nationalist Care and the Ethiopian Princess — Throughout the Ethiopian-Italian War the LFAS Cheering Fellow Women Patriots, When Haile Selassie’s Daughter Left “Under the Linen Cap to Bring Her Maternal Care to the Wounded,” La Voix des Femmes Celebrating and Connecting the Princess’s Nursing to Their Own Efforts, Perez Running a Three-Page Essay “Our Nurses” Arguing “the Woman Is Therefore Born a Nurse as She Was Born a Mother,” the Divinity Placed on Nursing Being a Characterization of Nationalist Care — Yet Perez’s Emphasis on Instinctual Care Signaling a Recurring Quandary About Self-Sacrificing Motherhood, Hine’s Work Showing Nursing Did Not Pose a Threat to Gender Structure, LFAS Women Using the Mother Category Less as Inevitable Role and More as Language to Communicate Care for Women and the Nation): Throughout the Ethiopian-Italian war, LFAS women cheered their fellow women patriots on and connected their practice to decisions made by Ethiopian women. When it was announced that Haile Selassie’s daughter had left with her Ethiopian sisters under the linen cap to bring her maternal care to the wounded and dying, La Voix des Femmes celebrated the princess and connected her service as a wartime nurse to their own efforts to build up Haitian women’s education in nursing. Several months later, Perez ran a three-page essay titled Our Nurses, arguing that the woman — slave, artist, worker, or queen — is drawn toward a patient by an unexplainable impulse, and that the woman is therefore born a nurse as she was born a mother. The divinity placed on nursing was a characterization of nationalist care. At the same time, Perez’s emphasis on instinctual care signaled a recurring quandary for LFAS women who struggled with how to locate themselves in relation to self-sacrificing motherhood. As historian Darlene Clark Hine’s work shows, the meanings of nursing for Black women were complicated because nursing did not pose a threat to gender structure. However, LFAS women often used the mother category less as an inevitable role and more, in the absence of alternative language, as a name to communicate their care for other women and the nation. Perez celebrated nurses as battalions so full of humanity, wearing their white uniforms like a badge of honor — in their white armor, Haitian nurses, like the Ethiopian princess, were soldiers for the well-being of the nation.