Early Black and Female Physicians in Jefferson County

EARLY BLACK AND FEMALE PHYSICIANS IN JEFFERSON COUNTY

A.J. Wright, M.L.S.
Department of Anesthesiology Library
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Female Physicians in Alabama Before World War I

In the late nineteenth century a number of black and female physicians began to receive certification to practice medicine in Alabama. The Medical Practice Act of 1877, a revision of an 1823 law, named the Medical Association of the State of Alabama to establish standards and qualifications for medical practitioners. The society's Board of Censors became the Board of Medical Examiners and issued or refused licenses at the state level. However, each county's Board of Censors could also administer examinations and issue licenses that were recognized statewide. By the 1880s black physicians applied for certification at both the state and county levels.

The presence of African-American and women physicians in the state in this period can be seen in the pages of the annual Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. This publication of the state medical society recorded all physcians who sat for examinations at both the state and county level; black physicians are noted by a "col." designation. Also recorded for each physician is medical school and year of graduation.

Perhaps the earliest black physician in Alabama was Burgess E. Scruggs, who became certified in Madison County in 1879 and who practiced in Huntsville until at least 1910. In 1884, Cornelius N. Dorsette began practice in Montgomery. He was a Hampton Institute classmate of Booker T. Washington, who persuaded Dorsette to come south after finishing medical school at the University of Buffalo. Dorsette founded the first Alabama hospital for blacks, Hale Infirmary, in 1890; the institution operated in Montgomery until 1958. Other early African-American physicians certified in Alabama include Allen L. Strong (1885, Dallas County) and Lincoln Laconia Burwell (1889, Dallas County).

One of the earliest black physicians to practice in Jefferson County was Arthur McKinnon Brown, a Raleigh, North Carolina, native who graduated from the University of Michigan School of Medicine in 1891 and received certification from the Jefferson County Board in that same year. After practicing for three years in Bessemer, Brown set up practice in Birmingham where he remained for many years. Brown was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 10th U.S. Cavalry in July 1898 and co-authored an account of that unit's missions in the Spanish-American War, Under Fire, published in 1899. Created in 1866, the 10th Cavalry was the famed "Buffalo soldiers" unit that fought in many campaigns in the American West.

Dr. Brown also served as President of the National Medical Association in 1914. Brown's residence at 319 4th Terrace in Birmingham's Smithfield neighborhood was designed by prominent black architect Wallace A. Rayfield, who designed other residences in that area as well as the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and A.M.E. churches nationwide. The house is now the A.M. Brown Community Center. When Brown died in December 1939, the Birmigham News observed that "He was regarded as one of the leading surgeons of his race."

Dr. Brown is often identified in the local media as the first black physician in Birmingham, but several others apparently began practice in the city before he did in 1894. John Burt Goin, a graduate of Meharry Medical College for blacks in Nashville, was certified by the county board to practice in 1892. Norman Hyde Hudson, a Long Island Hospital medical graduate, had already been certified by the same board the previous year. He left the state in either 1894 or 1895. J.M. Thompson is also listed in the 1891 Transactions as practicing in Birmingham. S.S.H. Washington was certified by the county board in 1887, but left the city before April, 1903. However, Dr. Brown's long and spectacular career has eclipsed memories of these individuals.

According to census data, fifty-five African-American physicians were practicing in Alabama in 1900. Other physicians practicing in Birmingham by this date include W.L. Councill, Logwood Ulysses Goin, J.T. Hundley, Ulysses Grant Mason, and George Hiram Wilkerson. By 1910 many other African-American doctors were in practice in the county: Jonas W. Aldridge (Bessemer), William Alexander Attaway (Bessemer, the Birmingham), L.W. Baldwin (Pratt City), C.O. Boothe (Birmingham), Thomas H. Brandon (Birmingham), William Henry Coleman (Birmingham, then Bessemer), Robert Cruikshank (Birmingham), M.H. Freeman (Birmingham), Eugene J. Gregg (Birmingham), B.E. Huckabee (Birmingham), D.W. Porter (Birmingham), A.G. Robertson (Birmingham), E.C. Shaw (Birmingham), E.M. Smith (Birmingham), A.E. Thomas (Birmingham), J.T. Thomas (Birmingham), C.E. Thompson (Birmingham), and Mitchell Dock Welburn (or Wellborn; Birmingham).

Female physicians were greater in number in the United States as a whole in this period but seem to have been very rare in Alabama. In 1890, according to census figures, there were 909 black physicians in the U.S. and 4,557 female doctors. By 1900 the numbers were 1,734 and 7,387 respectively. The first female physician in Alabama seems to have been Louisa Shepard of Dadeville, Alabama. She was the first southern woman to be awarded a medical degree from a southern institution. She graduated from the Graefenberg Medical Institute operated in Dadeville by her father, Dr. Philip Madison Shepard, from 1852 until 1861. The school was chartered by the Alabama legislature. The female Dr. Shepard apparently received much resistance to her medical practice, and soon moved to Texas to marry and raise a family.

Two black female physicians worked for relatively brief periods at Tuskegee Institute. Halle Tanner Dillon, born in Pittsburgh in 1864, came to Tuskegee in 1891, the year she graduated from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and received Alabama state board certification. Until she left Alabama in 1894, Dr. Dillon provided care to the Institute's 450 students and the 30 officers, teachers and their families. She is known to have died in Tennesse in 1901. Ionia R. Whipper, a 1903 graduate of Howard Medical School, came to Tuskegee that same year and spent a few years as physician to female students only.

Only a few women physicians have been identified in Jefferson County prior to 1920. Ella Elizabeth Barnes, an 1893 graduate of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, received her certification that year from the Jefferson County Board of Medical Examiners and appeared on the county medical society membership roll for 1893-94. Dicia Houston Baker, who was born in 1865, graduated from Cincinnati's Louvra Memorial Women's College in 1898, received certification from the same board in 1899 and appeared on the county medical society rolls from 1901 until 1905. She was also a member of the American Medical Association. Dr. Baker died in April, 1907. That these two female physicians were members of the local medical society during these decades seems an unusual situation worth further investigation.

Other female physicians in Birmingham in this early period include Irene Ballon Bullard, a University of Michigan medical school graduate who was certified by the county board in 1902 and appears in the Transactions through at least 1905. Annie May Robinson, who graduated from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1905, became certified in Alabama in 1907. A Smithsburg, Maryland, native born in 1865, Robinson practied obstetrics in Birmingham until her death in October, 1920. She is one of only two Alabama female physcians from this early period known to have been a member of the American Medical Association; she is also listed on the Jefferson County Medical Society rolls in 1910. A directory of women physcians published in 1910 identifies two others in Birmingham: Ollie Paxton Board and Hilary F. Oliver. Nothing else is known yet about these individuals except that Oliver died in Birmingham in May, 1914.

Not every physician who took the certification exams at either the state or county level passed. LeRoy Fern, an 1882 Meharry graduate, took the Jefferson County examination in 1885 but failed to pass. Anna M. Longshore, an 1891 graduate of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, took the same examination and also failed to become certified.

Research on these early black and female physicians in Jefferson County is continuing. Their presence in this area and that of others in Alabama contstitutes a "hidden legacy" in the state's medical history that deserves to be better known.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cashin HV, et al. Under Fire with the Tenth U.S. Cavalry. New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1899. Rep. Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1993

Directory of women physicians in California, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Arkansas and Colorado. Women's Med J 20(6):132-136, June 1910

Drachman VG. The limits of progress: the professional lives of women doctors, 1881-1926. Bull Hist Med 60:58-72, 1986

Holley HL. The History of Medicine in Alabama. University: University of Alabama Press, 1982, pp 260-261

"Negro Doctor is Taken By Death." Birmingham News 5 December 1939, p.9

Savitt TL. Entering a white profession: black physicians in the New South, 1880-1920. Bull Hist Med 61:507-540, 1987

Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, 1891-1910. Mongomery: Brown Printing Co., 1891-1910