Jeanne Spurlock, M.D. (1921-1999)

December 20, 2018 
/ Contributed By: Esther Altshul Helfgott

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Jeanne Marybeth Spurlock was a child and adolescent psychiatrist, a writer, and researcher specializing in Black family life. In 1971, she became the first African American and the first woman to win the Edward A. Strecker, M.D. Award for outstanding contributions to the field of clinical psychiatry; in 1988, she was awarded the Solomon Carter Fuller Award for the furtherance of the mental health of African Americans.ย  In 1994, she won the Alexandra Symonds Association of Women Psychiatrists (AWP) Leadership award. Among her many publications, Spurlock editedย Black Psychiatrists and American Psychiatryย (1999), and co-wrote with Ian A. Canini, M.D.ย Culturally Diverse Children and Adolescents: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatmentย (2000). Spurlock paved the way for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

Spurlock was born in Sandusky, Ohio on July 19, 1921 to Frank and Glodene A. Spurlock, the oldest of seven children. In 1940, after a public-school education in Detroit, she entered Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia. She left for lack of funds but soon transferred to Roosevelt University, Chicago and completed her undergraduate degree in 1943. She then entered Howard University College of Medicine graduating in 1947. She interned at Provident Hospital, Chicago followed by a residency in psychiatry at Cook County Psychopathic Hospital.

After her residence, Spurlock went into private practice and was consultant to the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville, Illinois. In 1950, she became staff psychiatrist at the Institute for Juvenile Research, Chicago and the Mental Hygiene Clinic at the Womenโ€™s and Childrensโ€™ Hospital, Chicago.

In 1953 Spurlock undertook adult and child psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and seven years later in 1960, she became Chief of the Psychiatry Clinic at Chicagoโ€™s Michael Reese Hospital. In 1968, Spurlock became Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1971, she served as Deputy Medical director for the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Spurlockโ€™s professional memberships included the American Womenโ€™s Medical Association, American College of Psychiatrists, Black Psychiatrists of America, National Medical Association, and Physicians for Human Rights. During the 1960s, she provided medical care to civil rights workers in Mississippi and Chicago.

Jeanne Spurlock died in Washington, D.C. on November 25, 1999 at the age of 78. She is interred at Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit where a memorial service was held on December 1, 1999. In 1999, the American Psychiatric Association established the Jeanne Spurlock, M.D. Minority Fellowship Achievement Award; in 2000, she was posthumously awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal by the American Medical Womenโ€™s Association.

Spurlockโ€™s papers (1923 to 2000) are held in the District of Columbia Africana Archives Project at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, Washington, D.C.

About the Author

Author Profile

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a nonfiction writer and poet with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. She is writing the biography of Viennese-born Seattle psychoanalyst, Edith Buxbaum, Ph.D. Esther is the author of Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimerโ€™s (2014); Dear Alzheimerโ€™s: A Caregiverโ€™s Diary & Poems (2013); The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices (2000). Poems or essays on Alzheimerโ€™s appear in Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimerโ€™s Disease; Into the Storm: Journeys with Alzheimerโ€™s; Mastering Caregiving in Alzheimerโ€™s Disease and other Dementias; Seattle P.I.; and elsewhere. Work on psychoanalysis or Edith Buxbaum appears in American Imago: Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences; Journal of Poetry Therapy, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review; HistoryLink.Org: the On-line Encyclopedia of Washington State History; Seattle Star and elsewhere. Esther is a longtime literary activist, a 2010 Jack Straw poet, and founder of Seattleโ€™s โ€œItโ€™s About Time Writerโ€™s Reading Series,โ€ now in its 32nd year.

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CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Helfgott, E. (2018, December 20). Jeanne Spurlock, M.D. (1921-1999). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/spurlock-jeanne-m-d-1921-1999/

Source of the Author's Information:

Ian A. Canini, M.D., โ€œIn Memoriam: Jeanne Spurlock, M.D. (1921-1999),โ€ Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39:6, June 2000, 804ย https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567(09)66256-0/pdf; โ€œDr. Jeanne Spurlock,โ€ Changing the face of Medicine: Celebrating Americaโ€™s Women Physicians. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md.ย https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_306.html, June 2003.

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