Less than six percent of physicians in the United States identify as Black or African American, according to a study published last year (source: AAMC). In a February 2023 CNN.com article about the study, one student cited what drove her to medical school was, “self-preservation.”
In this article today, we highlight the leadership of Black doctors in the 1800s who blazed a trail that is still being realized today.
James McCune Smith, MD (1813-1865)
Born into slavery, Dr. Smith is recognized as the first African American to earn a medical degree. Although he enrolled in the University of Glasgow Medical School due to racist admissions in the U.S., upon returning he was the first Black author in medical journals and to own and operate a pharmacy. He was a staunch abolitionist and used his training in medicine and statistics to challenge common – and racist - misconceptions about race, intelligence and medicine. (Source: Smithsonian Magazine)
David Jones Peck (1826-1855)
Dr. Peck, despite his short life, is noted as the first Black person to graduate from a medical school in the United States. He studied under Dr. Josephy P. Gazzam, a white abolitionist and physician in Pittsburgh and then enrolled in Rush Medical College in Chicago from where he graduated in 1847. (Source: Rush University Medical Center)
Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD (1831-1895)
Dr. Crumpler was the first Black woman in the United States to receive an MD in 1864. She earned her degree at the New England Female Medical College where the only black graduate at the time. Following the end of the Civil War in 1865 she moved to Virginia and worked with other black doctors to care for formerly enslaved people. She is also noted as the first, or one of the first, female physician authors with the 1883 publication of A Book of Medical Discourses, which covered the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints and the life and growth of human beings. (Source: PBS)
“I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the suffering of others.”-Dr. Crumpler
Susan Maria McKinney Steward (1847-1918)
Dr. McKinney Steward attended the New York Medical College for Women and graduated in 1869 as valedictorian. It is believed she chose a career in homeopathy because it was more accessible to women. She had a private clinic in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women’s Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. (Source: The Brooklyn Public Library)
Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931)
In 1891, Dr. Williams opened the country’s first racially integrated hospital, Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses in Chicago. He continued to make history as one of the first people to perform open-heart surgery when he sutured a man’s pericardium. A couple years later, Dr. Williams co-founded the National Medical Association, an organization for Black medical professionals since other national, professional medical organizations did not allow Black membership at the time. (Source: American Heart Association)
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