WILLS-FRANCES

“Navy admits Negroes into the WAVES” read the headlines following the Navy Department’s press release on October 19, 1944, announcing this change to integrate its female reserve program.  When the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) was initially established in July 1942 as a division of the Naval Reserve, African-American women were not permitted to join.  Although many organizations and prominent individuals objected to the policy and put pressure on the Navy to make a change, it was not until the October 1944 surprise announcement that they were finally permitted to join the WAVES.  The original plan was for admitting African-American women to serve separated from the rest of the fleet.  However, when only a few African-American women enlisted in the WAVES corps, the Secretary of the Navy integrated the WAVES into the force.  As African-American women commenced to join it was recognized that some should become naval officers.  Frances Elizabeth Wills and Harriet Ida Pickens were sworn into the Navy on November 13, 1944, as Seaman Recruits and entered the last class of officer candidates to be trained at Smith College in Massachusetts. 

Frances Elizabeth Wills was a native of Philadelphia and graduate of Hunter College in Bronx, New York.  While pursuing a masters degree in Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh she worked in an adoption agency, placing children in adoptive homes.  Wills and Pickens were two accomplished and well educated women, highly qualified to serve their country as military officers in time of war.  It was only their race that stood in their way and the remarkable pair would help to tear that barrier down.  Upon completion of officer candidate school Pickens and Wills were both commissioned on December 21, 1944, becoming the first African-American female officers in the Navy.  They were both assigned duty at the WAVES enlisted naval training station at Hunter College.  Wills taught naval history and administered classification tests.  When the war ended in September 1945, Wills and Pickens were the only two female African-American officers among the approximately 86,000 WAVES.  And, there were only 76 African-American enlisted women in the WAVES.  Overall, African-American women constituted less than one percent of the nearly 300,000 military women in the “\Greatest Generation” making their number statistically insignificant.  However, their fight for inclusion and equal treatment were significant chapters in the Civil Rights movement.

Wills’ experiences as a pioneering naval officer led her to eventually write the book “Navy Blue and Other Colors” which was published under her married name, Frances Wills Thorpe.  In 1996 she wrote the following comments concerning her book:

“The book, in the main, grew out of my experience as one of the first of two African-American women officers in the Navy.  Before describing my application, acceptance, training, assignments and friendships in the service, I outline my life up to that crucial point.  Birth and early childhood were in Pennsylvania and New York.  Following my discharge from the service, I relate adventures, largely growing out of that exposure.  The last third of my story includes the happy experience of my second marriage, now in its forty-third year -- in stark contrast to the first, which endured here and in Paris, France, for less than two months.”

She died in 1998 and is remembered as a pioneer for breaking barriers that had previously prohibited women and African-Americans from making their contributions to U.S. Navy actions around the world.

             

                Frances Wills (L) and Harriet Pickens being sworn into WAVES

                                      11/13/1944  -  New York City

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)