African American History Month - Hektoen International

African American medical pioneers

December 16, 2019

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States The road for African Americans in the medical professions has not been easy. Enslaved Africans received no education.1 During the first half of the nineteenth-century medical schools in the North would admit only a very small number of black students. Even after the Civil War, African Americans continued […]

Dr. Rebecca Cole and racial health disparities in nineteenth-century Philadelphia

June 21, 2019

Meg Vigil-Fowler Grand Junction, Colorado The anatomy lecture room at the Woman’s Medical College of New York Infirmary. Published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. April 16, 1870. Library of Congress. From the beginning of black women’s professional involvement in medicine, public health marked a central component of the scope of their practice. Rebecca Cole, […]

Character, genius, and a missing person in medicine

April 25, 2019

Carrie Barron Austin, Texas, USA The Calling “He is the most un-talked about, unacknowledged, unknown and most important figure in the African American community…A genius.”1 In 1944, a surgeon with his trusted guide by his side performed the very first open-heart surgery on a fifteen-month-old, nine-pound girl. 1930, Nashville. A twenty-year old African-American man, […]

Dr. Charles Drew, Philip Roth, and race

January 22, 2019

James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States Charles R. Drew, 1904 “My point is, if you have a course on health and whatever, then you do know Dr. Charles Drew. You’ve heard of him?” “No.” “Shame on you, Mr. Zukerman. I’ll tell you in a minute” . . . “You haven’t told me who […]

“Without dissent”: Early black physicians in Alabama

June 15, 2018

A.J. Wright Birmingham, Alabama, USA Burgess Scruggs2 Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette3 Hale Infirmary, Montgomery, Alabama4 Halle Tanner Dillon5 Alabama Medical Association Votes to Admit Negroes1 There is a brief but interesting note in the July 1953 issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association, the official voice of the organization founded in 1895 for African-American […]

“Mississippi Appendectomy” and other stories: when silence is complicity

January 10, 2018

Alida Rol Eugene, Oregon, United States Patient on the Table, 2017. Watercolor by Alida Rol, private collection. The world moves fast and it would rather pass u by than 2 stop and c what makes u cry. – Tupac Shakur, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” She sits perched on the exam table in a […]

Freedman’s Hospital

February 24, 2017

Yanglu Chen New Jersey, United States Freedmen’s Hospital, the teaching hospital for Howard University Medical School The name itself, Freedmen’s Hospital, betrays a sense of bitter conflict: that there existed men unfreed, and they were not treated here—and that even the freed men had only this hospital. In fact, Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington D.C. […]

Provident Hospital – the first Black owned and operated medical institution in the United States

February 23, 2017

Raymond H. Curry VeeLa Sengstacke Gonzales Chicago, Illinois, United States Nurses tending to a patient at Provident Hospital Prior to 1891 there was not in this country a single hospital or training school for nurses owned and managed by colored people . . . there are now twelve! . . . and not a […]

“Heard it through the grapevine”: The black barbershop as a source of health information

January 30, 2017

Joyce Balls-Berry Lea C. Dacy Rochester, Minnesota, USA James Balls St. Louis, Missouri, USA The black barbershop has been a crucial gathering place in the history of the Civil Rights movement to the present day, when Barack Obama’s campaign itineraries included barbershop visits. Lesser known is the role of the black barbershop as […]