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A Debt of Gratitude: The Black Community’s Contributions to Modern-Day Healthcare

HOPE Family Health
Feb 286 min read

By Liz Ferrell, Development & Community Outreach Specialist

 


In the early 1700s in colonial New England, a Boston clergyman and slave owner named Cotton Mather sought out an enslaved man in his household, a man named Onesimus that Mather credited as being “pretty intelligent.”

 

Mather had made an observation: among the local enslaved population, those from West Africa who had undergone a type of inoculation seemed impervious to smallpox even when repeatedly exposed.  Mather wisely listened when Onesimus described the African method of inoculation against smallpox. Because of this dialogue – between an enslaved individual willing to share knowledge brought from his native land and a man of great societal and cultural influence – the smallpox epidemic sweeping Boston in 1721 gave Mather a chance to test the information he had gleaned from Onesimus. Did inoculation help mitigate the ravages of smallpox?

 

Yes, it did. Decades later, American Revolutionary War soldiers received the protection this inoculation offered, and in the1790s British doctor Edward Jenner perfected the practice with use of a less virulent organism to create the smallpox vaccine. In the mid-20th century, the World Health Organization set a goal of eradicating the disease and succeeded; the last naturally transmitted case of smallpox occurred in 1977. Onesimus’ contribution to modern medicine, and Cotton Mather’s willingness to credit his wisdom, saved untold lives and contributed to smallpox eradication.

 

Individual Contributions

Onesimus was but one of many African American and Black healthcare pioneers whose work enables us live healthier, longer lives.

 

In 1783 Dr. James Durham bought his freedom and began his own medical practice in New Orleans, becoming the first African American doctor in the U.S. In 1789, Dr. Durham saved more yellow fever victims in New Orleans than any other physician, losing only 11 of 64 patients.


In 1837 Dr. James McCune Smith graduated from the University of Glasgow in Scotland to become the first African American to earn a medical degree.


In 1847 Dr. David Jones Peck became the first African American medical student to graduate from a medical school in the U.S. when he graduated from Chicago's Rush Medical College.


In 1864 Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman physician in the U.S. after earning her degree from New England Female Medical College in Boston.


In 1891 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams established the first Black-owned and interracial hospital in the U.S., Chicago’s Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses. And in 1893 he performed the first successful operation on a human heart, on a victim of a chest stab wound who survived the operation to live another twenty years.


In 1912 Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as the first Black psychiatrist in the U.S., published the first comprehensive clinical review of all Alzheimer’s patients reported up to that time. He also translated into English much of the work of Alois Alzheimer, the German psychiatrist credited with identifying the disease.


In 1940 Dr. Charles R. Drew presented his thesis, “Banked Blood,” at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. The thesis covered discoveries gleaned from two years of research, including the fact that plasma could replace whole blood transfusions.


On D-Day, June 6, 1944, a group of African American soldiers landed on Utah Beach in Normandy, France. This nine-person, all-Black team of medics served most of World War II’s European campaign with the 687th and 530th Medical Detachments of the 3rd Army.


In 1950 Dr. Helen O. Dickens became the first African American woman admitted to the American College of Surgeons.


In 1951, an African American patient named Henrietta Lacks underwent treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital for cervical cancer. Cells removed from her cervix for research proved able to live and grow indefinitely. These cells, named HeLa cells in her honor, have since been used for medical research in experiments ranging from determining the long-term effects of radiation to testing the live polio vaccine. Notably, the cells had been removed without Mrs. Lack's knowledge or consent - which, as explained in an article on the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, “...was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s. ... We at Johns Hopkins have been supportive of legal changes since 1951 that protect research subjects…including those related to informed consent.” The article notes that Johns Hopkins does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line and has never sought to profit from its discovery or distribution.


In 1970 Joyce Nichols became both the first female and the first African American formally educated as a Physician Assistant, graduating from Duke University’s PA Program.


In 1973 Patricia Bath became the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology. Two years later she became the first female on faculty at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute, and in 1976 she founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. In 1988 she became the first African American woman physician to receive a medical patent, with her Laserphaco Probe, which improved cataract treatment. 


In 1981 Alexa Canady became the first African American female neurosurgeon in the U.S.


In 1987 Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, led a 70-member surgical team at Johns Hopkins Hospital in separating conjoined twins joined at the cranium.


In 1991 Dr. Vivian Pinn became the first female, and the first African American woman, to be named Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health with the National Institutes of Health.


In 1995 Dr. Lonnie Bristow became the first African American President of the American Medical Association in its 148-year history.

 

Medical Education

Before 1865 medical schools were largely closed to Blacks. Following David J. Peck’s 1847 graduation from Chicago’s Rush Medical School, the number increased so that by 1860, at least nine medical schools in the Northern states admitted Black students.

 

Howard University College of Medicine, established in 1868 in Washington, D.C., for the purpose of educating black doctors, admitted both Black and White students, including women. Its first faculty consisted of four White men and one Black man, Dr. Alexander T. Augusta.

 

Meharry Medical College opened in 1876 in Nashville, Tennessee, with fewer than 12 students, most from the South. Originally part of Central Tennessee College, Meharry was eventually purchased by five White men, the Meharry brothers, who, being friends with a number of Black people, provided the resources for Meharry to build a four-story building.

 

Between 1868 and 1904 five other medical colleges for Blacks were established; however, by 1923, only Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry Medical School remained. Today Howard University College of Medicine has over 4,000 alumni and offers several degree programs, including a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), an M.D./Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), and a Bachelor of Science (B.S.)/M.D. Meharry’s degree programs include M.D. and Ph.D. as well as Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.), Master of Science in Public Health (M.S.P.H.), and Master of Science. In 2010 Meharry was named by the Annals of Internal Medicine as one of the top five producers of primary care physicians in the U.S.  

 

Community Health Centers

Community Health Centers were launched in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Office of Economic Opportunity to help address such health determinants as lack of access to healthcare, poverty, and inequality.

 

The movement was aided in no small part by two White men, Drs. H. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson. Earlier that year in Selma, Alabama, Geiger and Gibson had treated the wounds from bull whips and billy clubs inflicted on Civil Rights marchers, including a young John Lewis, when they crossed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Montgomery. Drs. Geiger and Gibson went on to spend their careers advocating for medical civil rights.

 

Today 1,400 CHCs in communities across the U.S. serve nearly 30 million people and represent an essential component of our national primary healthcare network. These CHCs, dedicated to serving low-income and medically underserved populations, are “distinguished by their mission to community and addressing the most pressing needs of our time through the lens of equity,” states a 2022 NACHC guest blog post by Lathran Johnson Woodard, then-CEO of the South Carolina Primary Care Association.

 

HOPE and the Halls of History

This article’s list of Black and African American contributors to the medical field is far from complete. To honor Black History Month, HOPE salutes those individuals, named and unnamed, who have made our work possible, and who continue to make a difference, case by case and patient by patient, day after day.

 

HOPE Family Health is proud to be a Community Health Center, offering primary and behavioral healthcare, imaging and pharmacy services and more. The high-quality care we give our patients every day is partly because of the work of these Black pioneers in medicine. And we are grateful.

 

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