African American Achievements in Medicine: Ten Profiles of Black Pioneers

Dr. Charles R. DrewCharles Richard Drew, 1904–1950, pioneer African-American physician, was born in Washington, D.C. As a surgeon and a professor at Howard Univ. (1935–36; 1942–50), he developed a means of preserving blood plasma for transfusion. During World War II he headed (1940–41) the program that sent blood to Great Britain.Among his noteworthy accomplishments, Drew was the first Director, American Red Cross Blood Bank, Professor, Howard University, and Chief Surgeon, Freedmen's Hospital. The U.S. Postal Service issued a Commemorative Stamp with his portrait in 1981.The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2011, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.Duke University Medical Center Library OnlineInfoplease.comDr. William Augustus HintonWilliam Augustus Hinton (1883-1959) was born in Chicago to Augustus Hinton and Maria Clark, both former slaves. Hinton grew up in Kansas, and after high school, he studied at the University of Kansas, finishing the premedical program in just two years instead of the usual three, before transferring to Harvard University, where he earned a B.S. degree in 1905.Following his graduation, he taught in Tennessee and Oklahoma. During the summers he continued his studies in bacteriology and physiology at the University of Chicago. In 1909, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School. With the aid of two prestigious scholarships he was able to graduate with honors in 1912.Hinton returned to Harvard Medical School in 1918 as an instructor in preventive medicine and hygiene, becoming the first African American to hold a professorship there. In 1921 he began teaching bacteriology and immunology--subjects he would teach at Harvard for more than thirty years.Hinton became internationally known as an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis. His serological test for syphilis, which proved to be more accurate than currently accepted tests, was endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1934. Known internationally for his development of a flocculation method for the detection of syphilis called the "Hinton Test," was widely accepted because it was simple, quick, and unambiguous.With the publishing of his textbook, Syphilis and Its Treatment, Hinton became the first African American physician to publish a textbook in 1936.In 1948, in recognition of his contributions as a serologist and public health bacteriologist, Hinton was elected a life member of the American Social Science Association. The serology lab at the Massachusetts Public Health Department's Laboratory Institute Building was named for him.Although Hinton retired from Harvard in 1950, he continued to teach there for several years and served as a physician at the Massachusetts Hospital School for Crippled Children in Canton, Massachusetts. Until 1953, he served as physician-in-chief of the Department of Clinical Laboratories of the Boston Dispensary, and he also served as a special consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service.Sources for this article include Wikipedia and Duke University Medical Center Library OnlineDr. Daniel Hale WilliamsDaniel Hale Williams, 1858–1931, noted American surgeon, was born in Hollidaysburg, PA, and earned his M.D. from Northwestern University in 1883. As surgeon of the South Side Dispensary in Chicago (1884–91), he became keenly aware of the lack of facilities for training African Americans like himself as doctors and nurses. As a result, he organized the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1891, the first black-owned hospital in the United States.In 1893, Williams performed the first successful closure of a wound of the heart and pericardium. In the same year President Cleveland appointed him surgeon in chief of Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, D.C., and during his five-year tenure there he reorganized the hospital and provided a training school for African American nurses.From 1893-1898, he was Surgeon-in-Chief, Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, DC. He also helped form the National Medical Association in 1895 (African Americans were denied membership in the American Medical Association) and was a charter member of the American College of Surgeons (first and only Negro member for many years) in 1913.From 1899 until his death he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn.Information for this entry was obtained from:The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed.Duke University Medical Center Library OnlineInfoplease.com View the list »
As the first African-American Neurosurgeon to separate conjoined twins, Dr. Ben Carson has made a significant contribution as a Black pioneer in medicine..

Ethnic Cultures newsletter

History recalls those who do things first and those who do things well. Given the truth of that quotation, we find that a small number of African Americans were among the first of their particular ethnic group to achieve notable success in the medical field.

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As we conclude Black History Month, the following article recognizes and lists some of the achievements in medicine by highlighting ten pioneer African Americans who exemplified excellence in the medical field and who opened the way for those who followed after them along the path of success.

In a feature article published by National Library of Medicine, "Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons,” the author comments on history of African American physicians from the pre-Civil War era to the present and notes that very few free African Americans were trained physicians or surgeons, and medical education was not open to people of color in the United States. Those seeking medical careers as physicians most often received their medical education in Canada or Europe, and a few from medical schools in the North.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans seeking a medical education were faced with difficult prospects. Few medical schools would admit black students regardless of their academic excellence.

For those achieving a medical degree, specialized studies and hospital privileges were almost unattainable as few hospitals allowed black physicians access for training or to treat patients. This continued into much of the 20th century, and although some black students were admitted into white medical schools and hospitals, they faced blatant racism, ostracism, and prejudice. African Americans have faced incredible obstacles along the path to success in the medical field.

In an historical article published by the National Library of Medicine, the author comments about those who undertook such an arduous pursuit:

“The journey of the African American physician from pre-Civil War to modern day America has been a challenging one. Early black pioneer physicians not only became skilled practitioners, they became trailblazers and educators paving the way for future physicians, surgeons, and nurses, and opening doors to better health care for the African American community.”

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  • Dr. Daniel Hale WilliamsDaniel Hale Williams, 1858–1931, noted American surgeon, was born in Hollidaysburg, PA, and earned his M.D. from Northwestern University in 1883. As surgeon of the South Side Dispensary in Chicago (1884–91), he became keenly aware of the lack of facilities for training African Americans like himself as doctors and nurses. As a result, he organized the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1891, the first black-owned hospital in the United States.In 1893, Williams performed the first successful closure of a wound of the heart and pericardium. In the same year President Cleveland appointed him surgeon in chief of Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, D.C., and during his five-year tenure there he reorganized the hospital and provided a training school for African American nurses.From 1893-1898, he was Surgeon-in-Chief, Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, DC. He also helped form the National Medical Association in 1895 (African Americans were denied membership in the American Medical Association) and was a charter member of the American College of Surgeons (first and only Negro member for many years) in 1913.From 1899 until his death he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn.Information for this entry was obtained from:The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed.Duke University Medical Center Library OnlineInfoplease.com 
  • Dr. William Augustus HintonWilliam Augustus Hinton (1883-1959) was born in Chicago to Augustus Hinton and Maria Clark, both former slaves. Hinton grew up in Kansas, and after high school, he studied at the University of Kansas, finishing the premedical program in just two years instead of the usual three, before transferring to Harvard University, where he earned a B.S. degree in 1905.Following his graduation, he taught in Tennessee and Oklahoma. During the summers he continued his studies in bacteriology and physiology at the University of Chicago. In 1909, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School. With the aid of two prestigious scholarships he was able to graduate with honors in 1912.Hinton returned to Harvard Medical School in 1918 as an instructor in preventive medicine and hygiene, becoming the first African American to hold a professorship there. In 1921 he began teaching bacteriology and immunology--subjects he would teach at Harvard for more than thirty years.Hinton became internationally known as an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis. His serological test for syphilis, which proved to be more accurate than currently accepted tests, was endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1934. Known internationally for his development of a flocculation method for the detection of syphilis called the "Hinton Test," was widely accepted because it was simple, quick, and unambiguous.With the publishing of his textbook, Syphilis and Its Treatment, Hinton became the first African American physician to publish a textbook in 1936.In 1948, in recognition of his contributions as a serologist and public health bacteriologist, Hinton was elected a life member of the American Social Science Association. The serology lab at the Massachusetts Public Health Department's Laboratory Institute Building was named for him.Although Hinton retired from Harvard in 1950, he continued to teach there for several years and served as a physician at the Massachusetts Hospital School for Crippled Children in Canton, Massachusetts. Until 1953, he served as physician-in-chief of the Department of Clinical Laboratories of the Boston Dispensary, and he also served as a special consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service.Sources for this article include Wikipedia and Duke University Medical Center Library Online
  • Dr. Charles R. DrewCharles Richard Drew, 1904–1950, pioneer African-American physician, was born in Washington, D.C. As a surgeon and a professor at Howard Univ. (1935–36; 1942–50), he developed a means of preserving blood plasma for transfusion. During World War II he headed (1940–41) the program that sent blood to Great Britain.Among his noteworthy accomplishments, Drew was the first Director, American Red Cross Blood Bank, Professor, Howard University, and Chief Surgeon, Freedmen's Hospital. The U.S. Postal Service issued a Commemorative Stamp with his portrait in 1981.The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2011, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.Duke University Medical Center Library OnlineInfoplease.com
  • Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845-1926)America's first Black professionally trained nurse, Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts and graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses in 1879, having worked there for fifteen years before being accepted into its nursing school.The Hospital was founded by women doctors in 1862. It started its nurse training program in 1872 with forty two students, only four actually graduated; including Linda Richards, who graduated as the first formally educated nurse in the United States.After gaining her nursing diploma in 1905, Mahoney worked for many years as a private care nurse, earning a distinguished reputation. From 1911 to 1912 she served as director of the Howard Orphan Asylum for black children in Kings Park, Long Island, New York.In 1896, Mahoney was one of the original members of a predominantly white Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada. In 1911 it became the American Nurses Association (ANA). In 1908 she was cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN).In retirement, Mahoney was still concerned with women's equality and a strong supporter of women’s suffrage (the movement to gain women the right to vote.) In 1920, she was among the first women in Boston to register to vote. She died on January 4, 1926, at age 80.Information for this entry was taken from Duke University Medical Center Library Online and Wikipedia.
  • James Derham (1762-1802?)James Derham, the first recognized Black physician in the United States, was born a slave in Philadelphia, where his early masters taught him the fundamentals of reading and writing. Derham, owned by a number of doctors, ended up in New Orleans with a Scottish physician, who hired him in 1783 to perform medical services. When he was 21, he bought his freedom and went to New Orleans where he set up his own medical practice.In 1788 he was invited to Philadelphia to meet Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Rush was so impressed with Derham's success in treating diphtheria patients, that he read Durham's paper on the subject before the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.In 1789, Durham returned to New Orleans, where he saved more yellow fever victims than any other physician in colonial Philadelphia. During an epidemic that killed thousands, he lost only 11 of 64 patients. He moved back to New Orleans and was lauded by prominent local doctors. Despite his skill, his ability to save so many lives, and his flourishing practice, his practice was restricted in 1801 by new city regulations because he did not have a formal medical degree.  He disappeared after 1802, and his fate was unknown.There is no known photograph of James Derham.Source for information for this entry was African-American Registry.
  • Dr. David Jones Peck (1826-1855)Between 1844 and 1846 David Peck studied medicine under Dr. Joseph P. Gaszzam, an anti-slavery white doctor in Pittsburgh. He then entered Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1846, three years after the institution opened. After he graduated in 1847, Peck became the first black man to graduate from an American medical school, 1847.Peck toured the state of Ohio with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass promoting abolitionist ideals. His status as the first black graduate of a medical college was used by abolitionists to promote the idea of full black citizenship and was implicitly an attack on slavery. In 1849 Peck established his practice in Philadelphia. Peck's medical practice, however, was not successful. Few doctors recognized his status, referred patients to him, or consulted with him, and he returned to Pittsburgh in 1850, having married Mary Lewis in Chicago, IL in 1849.At the suggestion of Martin R. Delany, Peck moved to San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua in early 1852. Peck was killed in the spring of 1855 in a skirmish between Democratic forces and their Republican rivals at Jalteva, Nicaragua (near Granada).There is no known photograph of David J. Peck.Sources for this article include BlackPast.org and Wikipedia.
  • Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895) Born in Delaware in 1831, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, M.D, is recognized frequently in history books as the first African American woman to earn a doctor of science degree. According to National Library of Medicine (NLM), she graduated in 1863 from the New England Female Medical College. Crumpler in her published writing entitled, “Book of Medical Discourses,” mentioned observing the aunt who raised her, skillfully care for the sick and credits that experience for awakening a passion for the field of medicine.Additionally, she cared for newly freed slaves after the Civil War while living in Richmond, Virginia. After several years there, she relocated to Boston with her husband, where according to Partners of the Heart, “Crumpler established a practice at 67 Joy Street dedicated to serving women and children, especially through nutrition and preventative medicine.”There is no known photograph of Rebecca Lee Crumpler.Source for this article was National Medical Association.
  • Dr. James McCune SmithJames McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865), American physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author, was the first African American to hold a medical degree, having graduated at the top in his class at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.  At the age of 25, just returned from medical school in Scotland, Dr. Smith rose at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society and spoke out against slavery, telling the crowd of abolitionist support in Europe. He was also the first African American to own and operate a pharmacy in the United States.In addition to practicing as a doctor for nearly 20 years at the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan, Smith was a public intellectual: he contributed articles to medical journals, participated in learned societies, and wrote numerous essays and articles drawing from his medical and statistical training. He used his training in medicine and statistics to refute common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine, and society in general. Invited as a founding member of the New York Statistics Society in 1852, which promoted a new science, he was elected as a member in 1854 of the recently founded American Geographic Society. But, he was never admitted to the American Medical Association or local medical associations.He has been most well known for his leadership as an abolitionist; a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with Frederick Douglass he helped start the National Council of Colored People in 1853, the first permanent national organization for blacks. Douglass said that Smith was "the single most important influence on his life." Smith was one of the Committee of Thirteen, who organized in 1850 in New York City to resist the newly passed Fugitive Slave Law by aiding fugitive slaves through the Underground Railroad. Other leading abolitionist activists were among his friends and colleagues. From the 1840s, he lectured on race and abolitionism and wrote numerous articles to refute racist ideas about black capacities.In 1863, Smith was appointed professor of anthropology at Wilberforce University, in Ohio. He died two years later in New York, survived by his wife and five children.Smith's unique achievements as a pioneering African-American doctor were rediscovered by twentieth-century historians through his descendants in the twenty-first century when a three-times-great-granddaughter took a history class and found his name in her grandmother's family bible. In 2010, several Smith descendants commissioned a new tombstone for his grave in Brooklyn. They gathered to honor him and their African-American ancestry.In 1863, Smith was appointed professor of anthropology at Wilberforce University, in Ohio. He died two years later in New York, survived by his wife and five children.Information for this article was obtained from Wikipedia and pbs.org.
  • Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, M.D. (1898-1980) Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, M.D., was born Norfolk, Virginia. She graduated from Tufts Medical College at the age of 37 and as with many young health care professionals of African descent born during that tense racial era, this consistent honor roll student was denied professional access into predominantly white hospitals. Determined, she moved to Washington DC for an internship at Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital).Dr. Ferebee was actively involved in countless organizations until her death at the age of 90. Here are some of her life's work: Founder of the Southeast Settlement House; 10th President of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc; Medical Director of the Mississippi Health Project; Vice President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia; Vice President of the Washington Urban League; Chair of the Washington Community Chest; Chair of the Women’s Division of the United Negro College Fund; Board Member of D.C. Social Hygiene Society, the Washington Housing Association and the Council of Social Agencies.In 1949 Dr. Ferebee was appointed director of Howard University Medical School's health services, a post she held until 1968. An active member of the National Council of Negro Women, she succeeded her friend Mary McLeod Bethune as its second president from 1949 to 1953, and expanded the organization's efforts to eliminate discrimination against minorities in housing, health care, education, and the armed forces.In the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the Council for Food for Peace, she toured Africa for five months, lecturing on preventive medicine. She died on September 14, 1980, in Washington D.C.Sources for this article include the National Medical Association, National Library of Medicine, and Wikipedia.
  • Dr. Ben CarsonDr. Benjamin Carson, the first African-American Neurosurgeon to separate conjoined twins, was born and reared in inner-city Detroit. Dr. Carson credits his mother Sonya's influence with much of his success. She worked as a domestic, with only a third grade education herself, but she prayed diligently for wisdom to help Ben and his older brother Curtis success in school. Vigorous studying and a thirst for knowledge enabled young Dr. Carson to graduate from high school with honors and gain admission to Yale University where he pursued a degree in Psychology.  He then went onto medical school at the University of Michigan, where his interest shifted from psychiatry to neurosurgery.It was then that Dr. Carson realized his ability to visualize the brain in three dimensions, excellent hand-eye coordination, and extensive neurological background were qualities fitting for a career as a neurosurgeon. After medical school, Dr. Carson became a neurosurgery resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. At age 33, Dr. Carson became the youngest physician to ever head a major division at Johns Hopkins. He is currently the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, a position he has held since 1984, and a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatric medicine.Dr. Carson's success and contribution to Johns Hopkins Hospital has been phenomenal. He has received much recognition for performing and mastering ground-breaking surgical procedures. Dr. Carson uses his dedication and God-given talent to take on seemingly impossible operations, giving children hope for a second chance at a healthy and normal life.The History of African Americans at Johns Hopkins University provided the information for this article.
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Having been blessed with a diverse life, Lonnell Johnson has worked as pharmacist, poet, professor, pastor, and publisher, among other careers. He seeks to observe life from a spiritual perspective and enjoys sharing his observations and insight. Check out his blog, Dr.J’s Apothecary Shoppe or...

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