The Golden 14: How Black Women Exploited a Loophole to Serve During World War I

It all started with a broken promise.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson was reelected to a second term in the White House after campaigning to continue his noninterventionist policies when it came to Europe's grinding war. Using the slogans "America First" and "He Kept Us Out of War," Wilson promised nervous Americans that he would not send their children overseas to fight a war that -- in his estimation -- did not concern the United States.

Until it did. In January 1917, Germany ended its pause on torpedoing ships in the Atlantic Ocean and began blowing merchant vessels out of the water. That same month, the British decoded a telegram intercepted from the German foreign minister to the German diplomat in Mexico, suggesting an alliance between the two nations in an effort to oppose the U.S.

Just five months after an election won on isolationism, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Europe's Central Powers. It did on April 6, 1917.

This created a problem that some -- including former president Teddy Roosevelt -- had seen coming. The U.S. wasn't ready for war: While European powers had entered World War I with large, standing armies, the U.S. military ranks were paltry by comparison. Warfare had changed, too. Suddenly, the nation had to swell its ranks and train untested draftees in new technologies and tactics.

Enter the Naval Act of 1916. Enacted a year before with broad, gender- and race-neutral language, the law allowed "all persons who may be capable of performing special useful service for coastal defense" to enlist in the Navy's reserve force. Originally created as a response to low enlistment during peacetime, the Navy realized it could use the law to help with a manpower deficit during wartime.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels was an unrepentant white supremacist and segregationist who was instrumental in disenfranchising Black North Carolinians and stoking the deadly 1898 Wilmington Insurrection through his influential newspaper. Paradoxically, he was an ardent supporter of white women's rights. Just before the declaration of war -- and with Daniels' support -- the Navy began drumming up white female recruits.

Perhaps Daniels couldn't imagine that the technicality used to usher white women into the Navy would be the same loophole through which 14 Black women would climb into history as the Navy's first enlisted Black women. Seizing an opportunity to fill desk positions, John T. Risher, a Black supervisor, assigned those women -- some of whom had tried to enlist previously and were denied for erroneous reasons -- to his staff.

Later known as the Golden 14, they were attached to the USS Triton and were part of the Muster Roll Division out of Washington, D.C. In their role as "Yeowomen" or "Yeomanettes," they performed vital clerical work, freeing up men to serve in other capacities that were not open to women.

The National Archives lists the women of the Golden 14 as Armelda H. Greene, Kathryn E. Finch, Pocohontas A. Jackson, Fannie A. Foote, Ruth Davis, Olga F. Jones, Sarah Davis, Sarah E. Howard, Marie E. Mitchell, Anna G. Smallwood, Maud C. Williams. Carol E. Washington, Josie B. Washington and Inez B. McIntosh.

With few preserved firsthand accounts and records, many of the details have faded in the century since their service. Unfortunately, the Golden 14's service went largely unknown and unheralded for the majority of their lifetimes, giving little opportunity to collect personal anecdotes from the pioneering women. We do know that they faced certain racial discrimination in their personal and professional lives as the Navy and Washington, D.C., were both segregated during WWI. The women also dealt with sexism. For example, the Navy had no dining halls or barracks for any women -- and certainly not for Black women -- so they were left to their own devices to find room and board.

And yet, the records they did leave behind show that they served with distinction. "The History of the World War for Human Rights," published shortly after WWI, dedicates a paragraph to the "experiment," noting specifically that the Golden 14 were watched closely and found highly capable by those in leadership, all of whom were white.

"Many of the superior officials have scrutinized the experiment very closely and are a unit in the sincerity of their admiration of its success and effectiveness," sociologist Kelly Miller noted.

By the end of the war, more than 11,000 women -- the vast majority of whom were white -- served in the Navy. While many Yeowomen left government work behind after their enlistment ended, at least one member of the Golden 14 continued her work as a Navy civilian employee for the next 23 years.

It would take two more decades and another world war before the Navy -- and the rest of the military -- took seriously the contributions of Black women, albeit begrudgingly and slowly. Through their service, the Golden 14 set a social and legal precedent for women that paved the way for other intrepid women, including Lieutenants Junior Grade Harriet Pickens and Frances Wills, the first Black female U.S. Navy officers.

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