Dr. Roselyn Epps was the first African American local president of the American Medical Women’s Association, the first African American and first woman to become president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the first African American elected national president of the American Medical Women’s Association and the first African American woman president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.
Dr. Vivian Pinn was the first African American woman to chair an academic pathology department in the United States, at Howard University College of Medicine, and the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Rosalyn P. Scott was a founding member of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons and the Association of Black Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons. She was the first Mary A. Fraley Fellow at the Texas Heart Institute, the first African American woman to be trained in thoracic surgery and the first African American woman to be granted membership in the Society of University Surgeons.
Dr. Renee Jenkins was the first African American president of the Society of Adolescent Medicine and the first African American elected as president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In 1867, Rebecca J. Cole became the second African American woman to receive an M.D. degree in the United States.
Dr. Buckingham has received the Presidential Scholar Award from the Black American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Black National Medical Association, Psychiatry Division, Chester Pierce Resident’s Award.
Dr. Yvonnecris Veal was the fifth African American student to be enrolled in the Medical College of Virginia, at a time when only 14 of the 26 southern medical schools had accepted black students. She was the first woman to chair the Board of Trustees of the National Medical Association.
In 1972, Dr. Sayde Curry was the first African American woman to become a gastroenterologist in the United States, and the only African American to train in the gastroenterology fellowship program at Duke University.
Dr. Benjamin was appointed U.S. Surgeon General in 2009.
Maria Concepcion Bautista Vázquez is a Tsotsil writer and painter from the Tsotsil pueblo of Huixtan, Chiapas.