An undated photo of Nancy Leftenant-Colon, the first African American commissioned into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after it was desegregated in the 1940s. She died Jan. 8, 2025, at the age of 104. (CAF RISE ABOVE)

Retired Maj. Nancy Leftenant-Colon, the first African American commissioned into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after it was desegregated in the 1940s, has died at the age of 104.

Leftenant-Colon died peacefully at a nursing facility in her hometown of Amityville, N.Y., on Jan. 8, her nephew, Chris Leftenant, told National Public Radio on Wednesday.

“Lefty,” as she was known to many, was lauded for breaking down racial barriers and for her lifelong dedication to preserving the legacy of African American military pioneers.

Born on Sept. 29, 1920, near Charleston, S.C., Leftenant-Colon was one of 12 children of James and Eunice Leftenant and the granddaughter of a freed slave, according to her official biography. Her family left the Jim Crow South for Amityville in 1923.

After graduating from nursing school in 1941, Leftenant-Colon attempted to join the military but was told Black nurses weren’t allowed.

She kept trying, and in January 1945, she was accepted into the Army Nurse Corps as a reservist with the rank of second lieutenant. Black nurses were still prohibited from joining the regular Army at the time.

Her first assignment took her to Lowell General Hospital in Fort Devens, Mass., where she treated World War II casualties in the final months of the conflict.

President Harry Truman signed an executive order abolishing segregation in the military in 1948. Upon hearing the news, Leftenant-Colon applied for regular Army Nurse Corps status and became the first Black woman integrated into the Corps.

She was assigned at the time to the 332nd Station Medical Group at Lockbourne Army Air Base, now Rickenbacker Air Force Base, in Ohio.

It was the same base where the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of primarily African American military pilots and service members who fought in World War II, were stationed.

Leftenant-Colon chose to transfer to the Air Force when the service split from the Army after the war.

She was deployed overseas during the Korean and Vietnam wars. In addition to helping set up field hospitals in war zones, she was a flight nurse on the first medical evacuation flight during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, according to her biography on the Tuskegee Airmen website.

Leftenant-Colon’s final assignment was to McGuire Air Force Base, N.J., where she retired as chief nurse in 1965.

“This is what I wanted, and this is what I went after,” Leftenant-Colon said of her career in a 2023 interview with CBS.

Leftenant-Colon wasn’t shy about speaking of the racism she faced during her career, which overlapped with the civil rights movement.

While she served, there was “always fear and discrimination; however, I was determined that it would not deter me,” according to a quote in her biography on the National Association of American Veterans website.

She married Air Force Reserve Capt. Bayard K. Colon after retirement. Colon died of a heart attack in 1972. The couple had no children.

Leftenant-Colon continued to break down barriers after her military career, becoming the first, and so far only, woman to be elected president of the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., an organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the historic group. She held the post from 1989 to 1991.

Nancy Leftenant-Colon, seen here at her brother Samuel Leftenant's memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery in 2016, died Jan. 8, 2025, at the age of 104. Leftenant-Colon was the first African American commissioned into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after it was desegregated in the 1940s. (Rachel Larue/Arlington National Cemetery)

“She was an amazing little lady, rest easy Nurse Nancy,” the group’s national office said in a Facebook post Jan. 9.

Five of Leftenant-Colon’s siblings also were in the military, including her younger brother Sam Leftenant, a pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen who was killed in a midair collision in April 1945. His remains have yet to be found and identified.

Following her military service, Leftenant-Colon worked as a school nurse at Amityville High School, the same school she graduated from in 1939. A new media center at the school was named after her in 2018.

Leftenant-Colon, along with selected members of the Tuskegee Airmen, received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush in March 2007.

“I really feel that I was put here for a reason,” Leftenant-Colon told CBS in 2023. “Life has been really very good to me.”