Alexander Thomas Augusta was the highest-ranking black officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was also the first African American head of a hospital (Freedmen’s Hospital) and the first black professor of medicine (Howard University in Washington, D.C.). Augusta was born in … Read MoreAlexander T. Augusta (1825-1890)
Patricia Era Bath, a prominent ophthalmologist and innovative research and laser scientist, was the first African American woman physician to receive a patent for a medical invention. Bath was born on November 4, 1942 in Harlem, New York to Rupert Bath, a Trinidadian immigrant and … Read MorePatricia Bath (1942-2019)
David Jones Peck was the first black man to graduate from an American medical school. He was born to John C. and Sarah Peck in Carlisle, Pennsylvania around 1826. John Peck was a prominent abolitionist and minister who founded the local African Methodist Episcopal (AME) … Read MoreDavid Jones Peck (ca. 1826-1855)
Dr. John Henry Jordan, the first black doctor in Coweta County, Georgia, was born in Troup County, Georgia on March 11, 1870, to Berry and Isabella Jordan. His father was a sharecropper and his mother died when he was two. As a child, Jordan was … Read MoreJohn Henry Jordan (1870-1912)
Melvin Herbert Evans was born on August 7, 1917, in Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. He attended public schools until entering Howard University where he received his B.S. in 1940. In 1944 he received his M.D. from Howard College of Medicine, whereupon he served in … Read MoreMelvin Herbert Evans (1917-1984)
Physician and newspaper publisher, Louis Charles Roudanez was born free in June of 1823 in Saint James Parish, Louisiana. He was the son of a French merchant named Louis Roudanez and a black woman named Aimée Potens. Though his baptismal record registers him as white, … Read MoreLouis Charles Roudanez (1823-1890)
Donna Marie Christian-Christensen, the non-voting delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the United States House of Representatives, was born in Teaneck, Monmouth Country, New Jersey on September 19, 1945 to the late Judge Almeric Christian and Virginia Sterling Christian. Christensen attended St. Mary’s College … Read MoreDonna Marie Christensen (1945- )
George Alexander McGuire was a bishop and founder of the African Orthodox Church, as well as chaplain-general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). McGuire was born on March 26, 1866 at Sweets, Antigua, in the Caribbean. He was educated in the local school system, … Read MoreGeorge Alexander McGuire (1866-1934)
Joycelyn Elders, the former U.S. Surgeon General, was born Minnie Lee Jones in Schaal, Arkansas on August 13, 1933, to Curtis and Hailer Jones; she added the name Joycelyn when she was in college. As the eldest of eight children of sharecroppers, Joycelyn Elders experienced extreme poverty in segregated, … Read MoreJoycelyn Minnie Elders (1933- )
Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was the first African American woman to earn a medical doctorate (M.D.) in New York State and the third in the United States. Susan Smith was born to elite Brooklyn parents, Ann Springstead and Sylvanus Smith. She was of mixed … Read MoreSusan Smith McKinney Steward (1847-1918)
