In 1948, Dr. Margaret Lawrence was the first African American to complete a residency at the New York Psychiatric Institute and the first African American trainee to be certified in psychoanalysis at Columbia University’s Columbia Psycoanalytic Center. In 1953, she was the first practicing child psychiatrist in Rockland County, New York and co-founder of the Rockland County Center for Mental Health in New York.
In 1900, Dr. Georgia Dwelle was the first Spelman College graduate to attend medical school. In 1920, she established the first obstetrical “lying-in” hospital for African American women in Atlanta. In 1935, she established the first venereal disease clinic for African Americans in Georgia and founded the first “Mother’s Club” for African American women in Georgia.
As national director of health services for Project Head Start in 1965, Dr. Gertrude Hunter helped implement the first national comprehensive health program to immunize, offer preventive medical and dental care, and treat any hidden health conditions in preschool children.
Dr. Grace James was one of the first two African American women on the faculty at a southern medical school and the first African American on the staff of the Louisville Children’s Hospital and on the faculty at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
When Halle Tanner Dillon passed the Alabama State Medical Examination in 1891, even the New York Times took notice.
Dr. Dickens became the first African American woman admitted to American College of Surgeons in 1950.
Assistant surgeon general and rear admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
In 1998, Dr. Ileana Vargas-Rodriguez helped establish the pediatric component of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
American physician with both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in human genetics.
As a young medical student at Howard University College of Medicine from 1972 to 1976, Janet Mitchell saw patients from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Later, from 1976 to 1980, she served both her postgraduate internship and residency at New York’s Harlem Hospital Center. “Working at Harlem and doing almost all of my rotations in medical school at D.C. General Hospital, I said ‘there but by the grace of God—go I.’ I have ever since devoted myself to the underserved and the most disenfranchised.”