Charissa J. Threat

Charissa J. Threat is a historian whose scholarship connects race, gender, labor, citizenship, and military institutions. Nursing Civil Rights examines campaigns by African American women and white men to enter and advance within the United States Army Nurse Corps from the Second World War through the Vietnam era. The study appeared from University of Illinois Press in 2015 with the subtitle Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps. Threat shows that the two groups challenged different forms of occupational exclusion, sometimes pursuing parallel claims without forming a shared movement. Her analysis also follows the consequences of partial integration, including moments when successful reformers defended barriers faced by others. Drawing military nursing into civil rights history, the book treats professional status and intimate care as political questions rather than background concerns. Threat’s work at Spelman College further reflects her focus on twentieth-century United States history, women’s history, and the institutions that shape access to public service.