University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII
THE NEGRO DOCTOR AND THE NEGRO PROFESSIONAL
MAN

IT WAS not until 1884, as near as I can now remember,
that the first coloured physician,
Dr. C. N. Dorsette, set up an office and began
to practise medicine in Montgomery, Alabama.
Previous to that time I do not think there was a Negro
doctor, dentist or pharmacist in the state. At the
present time there are more than one hundred,
and the members of these three professions in
Alabama maintain a flourishing state association,
which in turn is connected with the National
Medical Association, having representatives in ten
Southern and twelve Northern states. I may
add that the first woman physician who was ever
granted a licence to practise medicine in the State
of Alabama was a coloured woman, Dr. Sadie
Dillon, a daughter of Bishop Benjamin Tanner,
and a sister of H. O. Tanner, the distinguished Negro
painter.

It is an indication of the progress of Negro doctors
of Alabama, since Dr. Dorsette first came to the state,
that there are at the present time no less than six

infirmaries or hospitals which have been established
since then and are largely maintained under the
direction of the Negro physicians of this state.
There are, for instance, the Cottage Home Infirmary,
conducted by Dr. W. E. Sterrs, at Decatur; the
Home Infirmary, conducted by Dr. U. G. Mason
and Dr. A. M. Brown; the Selma Infirmary, conducted
by Dr. L. L. Burwell, of Selma, Alabama;
and the Harris Infirmary, conducted by Dr. T. N.
Harris, at Mobile. In addition to these there is the
Hale's Infirmary at Montgomery, Alabama, and the
Institute Hospital at Tuskegee, conducted by Dr.
J. A. Kenney, who is, I may add, Secretary of the
National Medical Association.

The Hale's Infirmary was given to the coloured
people at Montgomery by James H. Hale and his
widow, Ann Hale, at a cost of something like
twenty-five thousand dollars. When the building
was first opened in 1899, Mrs. Ann Hale conducted
it with her own means and what she was able to
solicit from other sources. At the present time
it is supported in part by money given by the
city and by donations from women's clubs, the
contributions of churches and lodges of the secret
orders of the city.

The rapid advancement of the Negro physician
in Alabama is an indication of the progress which is
taking place elsewhere throughout the South. A
few years ago almost the only Negro doctor one ever

heard of in the Southern states was an individual
known as "the root doctor," a kind of mendicant
medicine-man, who travelled about through the
country districts with a little stock of herbs and
philters and a large stock of superstition, with which
he traded upon the credulity of the country people.
The medicines these men used were mostly harmless
and the cures they performed consisted largely in
convincing the people that they were going to get well,
thus putting them in a way to actually recover from
their ailments. They were, in fact, a kind of faith-healers,
though mostly, I fear, they were merely frauds.

The "root doctor" has not entirely disappeared
from the country districts of the South, but more and
more the masses of the people are overcoming their
instinctive distrust of hospitals and surgeons, and
are learning to have faith in scientific medicine. A
striking illustration of one of the ways in which this
change is coming about was furnished me during a
recent journey through South Carolina. At the
Voorhees Industrial School, which is situated a few
miles from Denmark, in the midst of a rich farming
district of Central South Carolina, I observed that a
large and commodious hospital had been erected.
Although at the time I was there this hospital had
not yet been fully equipped and put in working order,
yet it suggested to me one of the unexpected ways in
which an industrial school like this, situated in the
open country as it is, can exercise and is exercising a

civilising and uplifting influence upon the masses of
the people.

Outside of the larger hospitals, like the Freedmen's
Hospital in Washington, District of Columbia,
the Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and the
Frederick Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia, there
are, in almost every city in the South, these smaller institutions
to which I have referred, established by coloured
physicians in order to provide for the needs of
the coloured population. Although most of these
institutions are poorly equipped, they have proved a
great blessing to the communities in which they were
established. Frequently they have been the only
places in which Negroes, suffering from some unusual
form of disease, could obtain anything like proper
treatment. They have provided the only places in
which serious surgical operations would be performed,
with the assurance that the patient would be
properly cared for after the operation was completed.

At first all the serious surgical operations were performed
by white men but, as coloured surgeons in
different parts of the country have gained in skill
and in reputation, they have been invited to attend
the meetings of the different state associations and
to hold clinics at the different Negro infirmaries and
hospitals. In these clinics the coloured physicians
have had an opportunity to see major operations
performed by experts and specialists of their own
race and thus have gained knowledge and experience

in their profession that they could not otherwise
obtain. For instance, at a recent meeting of the
Alabama State Association at Birmingham there
were present, Dr. George C. Hall of Chicago, Dr
A M Curtis of Washington, and Drs. Boyd, Stewart
and Roman of the Maharry Medical College of
Nashville, Tennessee. All of these men have
gained a national reputation, either as teachers of
medicine or as surgeons.

One of the hospitals to which I have referred, the
Taylor-Lane Hospital, at Orangeburg, South Carolina,
was started by a coloured woman, Dr. Matilda A.
Evans Dr. Evans, aside from the fact that she was
the first woman doctor in Orangeburg, and perhaps
also in the State of South Carolina, has an interesting
history. Her grandmother, who was Edith Willis, was
kidnapped from Chester County, Pennsylvania, when
she was a child, and taken to Charleston, South
Carolina, where she was sold as a slave. She
eventually became a cook on the plantation of Mr.
John Brodie, who was a descendant of one of the old
families of South Carolina. Dr. Matilda Evans
was born on this plantation six years after emancipation.
She was educated in the famous Schofield
School at Aiken, South Carolina, and eventually
studied medicine at the Woman's Medical College in
Philadelphia. Before she started North, however,
she stopped for a few days with a coloured family
at Orangeburg. There she heard for the first time

about Dr. B. W. Taylor, "Mars Ben," as the
people she lived with called him. These people
impressed upon her that if she ever intended to
return to Orangeburg, to practise medicine, she
must go to see "Mars Ben" because he would
help her.

After she had completed her course at the medical
college in Philadelphia, the young woman physician
wrote to Dr. Taylor, and he encouraged her to
return to Orangeburg and take up the profession.
From the first, she says, he, as well as the other white
physicians in the town, assisted her in every way.
She has been unusually successful. About half of
her practice in Orangeburg, I have been told, is
among the white people. Among her patients are
the descendants of the family to which her grandmother
and mother had belonged as slaves. At
the same time she is on the best of terms with all the
doctors in the town, white and black, who have
assisted her in establishing and maintaining the
Taylor-Lane Hospital, of which she is the founder
and has the entire management.

It would be a mistake to assume from what I have
said, thus far, that there were no Negro physicians
in the United States before the Civil War. The
earliest Negro doctor to attain any degree of distinction
was James Derham.

James Derham was born a slave in Philadelphia in
1767. His master taught him to read and write, and

employed him in compounding medicines. After a
time the young slave became so skilful that he was
employed as an assistant by a new master to whom
he was afterward sold. He succeeded, while he
was still a young man, in purchasing his freedom and
eventually removed to New Orleans, Louisiana, where
he built up a lucrative practice. The celebrated
Dr. Rush published an account of him in the American
Museum in which he spoke in the highest terms
of his character and his skill as a physician.

Another Negro doctor, who gained considerable
reputation previous to the Civil War, was Dr.
James McCune Smith, who, unable to obtain a
technical education in the United States, went to
England and eventually graduated at Glasgow.
He practised in New York for twenty-five years,
where he became one of the most influential men of
his race. Dr. Smith was the first coloured man to
establish a pharmacy in the United States.

In 1854, Dr. John V. De Grasse was admitted in
due form as a member of the Massachusetts Medical
Society, probably the first instance of such an honour
being conferred upon a Negro in this country.
When the professional schools began to receive
coloured students after the close of the Civil War, a
number of young men eagerly took advantage of
the opportunity to equip themselves for professional
careers. Howard University in Washington
has graduated over a thousand students from the

medical department alone and almost half that number
from the department of law.

The majority of the Negro doctors, dentists and
pharmacists in the South have been educated at
Howard University, Washington, District of Columbia,
at Meharry Medical College, Nashville,
Tennessee, or at the Leonard Medical College at
Raleigh, N. C. At the Leonard Medical College
from the beginning, a majority of the professors
have been Southern white men residing in Raleigh.

In this connection, I may add, that the Negro
doctor, as soon as he shows fitness for his profession,
is usually treated with every courtesy by white
physicians. White doctors have everywhere encouraged
the building of hospitals for coloured patients.
They have shown themselves, with a few exceptions,
willing and even glad to consult with Negro physicians
whenever they are called upon to do so. In
almost every part of the South which I have visited
the Negro physician is treated with great respect by
white people as well as coloured, and as a rule, I
think it is true that the Negro physicians are entitled
to the consideration and respect of the communities
in which they live. There are comparatively few
of them who have not held their own, from a moral
point of view. The number of those who have gone
down on account of drink, or other had habits, is
comparatively small.

More and more, also, the white people of the South

are beginning to recognise that their own interests,
as far as health is concerned, are intimately interwoven
with those of the coloured race. Disease
draws no colour line. It is not possible that the
conditions of life in that part of the city where the
coloured people live should be filthy and degrading,
such as tend to produce disease and crime, without
these conditions sooner or later affecting the lives of
those who live in other parts of the city. If the
woman who does the household washing lives in a
part of the city where there is consumption or smallpox,
the seeds of that disease will eventually be carried
into the homes of all her employers, no matter how
carefully guarded they are in other respects. If the
servant who prepares the food or has the care of the
children spends a large part of her life among people
who are unclean, and in a region that is infected with
disease, it is inevitable that sooner or later she will
impart that disease to the family under her care.

In the education of the people in the laws of healthful
living and in the improvement of conditions
among the poorer classes the Negro doctor is able to
perform a great service, not only for the people of his
own race, but for all the people in the community in
which he lives.

One of the agencies that has done most to build up
the medical profession among the Negroes is the
National Medical Association, which includes among
its members some three hundred and fifty Negro

physicians, surgeons and pharmacists, and reaches
through correspondence some fifteen hundred others.
This Association grew out of a congress of Negro
physicians and surgeons that was held at the Exposition
at Atlanta, in 1895. Dr. I. Garland Penn, the
assistant general secretary of the Epworth League
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who was commissioner
of Negro exhibits for the Atlanta Exposition,
was indirectly responsible for it. He conceived
the idea that, in connection with the other
features of the Exposition, an attempt should be
made to bring together as large a number of Negro
physicians and surgeons as possible, because he
believed that the meeting would not only be of
advantage to the Negro physicians themselves, but
also would give the world some idea of the progress
Negroes were making in that branch of science.

It was Dr. R. F. Boyd, of Nashville, afterward
chosen as the first president of the Association, who
was largely responsible for making this congress a
permanent institution. During the first years of
its existence the Association met irregularly. Since
1900, however, the meetings have been held annually.
One of the features of these annual meetings has been
the surgical clinics held by Doctors Daniel H.
Williams, George C. Hall and A. M. Curtis and
others.

Dr. Daniel H. Williams and Dr. George C. Hall,
of Chicago, are probably the most noted Negro

surgeons in the United States. They have to their
credit the performance of some of the most noteworthy
operations that have been undertaken by any
surgeon of any race.

The influence of the Negro doctor in the elevation
of the race has extended further than the mere practice
of medicine. In many cases it will be found that
he is a successful busines man in the community in
which he lives and the owner of valuable property.
In Montgomery, Alabama, for instance, the Negro
doctors own and operate four drug-stores. The
same is true in Birmingham and Mobile. In fact,
outside of the real estate business there is probably
no kind of enterprise in which Negroes have been so
largely successful as in the drug business. There
is hardly a city of any Importance in the Southern
states in which there are not Negro druggists.
From such investigations as I have been able to
make I have learned that, at the present time, there
are no less than one hundred and thirty-six druggists
in the Southern states, and, in most cases, these
stores have been started, in the first instance, by or
under the direction of Negro physicians.

In cases where a Negro physician has started a
store in connection with his office, he will often have
a wife or brother, or, after a time, a son or daughter,
who is a professional pharmacist. He will place his
daughter or his wife in charge of the store, while he
attends to the duties of his profession. In this way

he is able not only to make certain economies in the
business, but also to widen the economic opportunity
of the other members of the family and of the members
of his race.

The progress of the Negro physician and surgeon
is but an instance and an indication of the rise of the
professional class among the coloured people in
America. The first and largest class, since the
first and most pressing need of the Negro after emancipation
was education, is that of teachers. According
to the census of 1900 there were 21,268 Negro
teachers in schools and colleges. This was an
increase of 6,168 from 1890 to 1900, or 40.8 per cent.,
which was more than twice as rapid as the increase
of the Negro population. The increase of the white
teachers for the same period was 27.7 per cent.

It is probable that in the ten years the increase has
been proportionately less among the teachers than
among the other professions, the professions of
medicine, dentistry and pharmacy having become
especially popular in recent years. Next to the
teachers the ministers make up the largest group
among Negroes in the professions. In 1900, the
number of Negro ministers was 15,530, an increase
of 3,371 from 1890 to 1900, or 27.7 per cent. During
the same decade white ministers increased less
rapidly, or 26.4 per cent.

In the other groups of the professional class of
Negroes there were 1,734 physicians and surgeons,

212 dentists, 728 lawyers, 99 literary and scientific
persons and 210 journalists. In each of these groups
there have arisen, within the short period of forty
years, several men and women who, by reason of
their mental and moral qualities, were an honour
to their profession and an inspiration to the members
of their own race, who have seen in their success a
concrete example of what Negroes can do to raise
themselves and make themselves of service to the
world.

In the profession of teaching the work of coloured
women has been, to a marked degree, one in which
heroism has played a part worthy of record and
remembrance. Were I asked to select an example
of the best type of the Negro woman's work for the
uplift of her race since freedom began, without a
moment's hesitancy my choice would be the coloured
woman teacher, especially the one who has borne the
burden of teaching in the rural districts of the South,
where she has had to labor, for the most part, without
the hope of material reward or the praise of men.

I know the names of hundreds of these devoted
women, who have gone out into the country districts
of the South and given their lives in a self-sacrificing
and often apparently hopeless effort to lift up the
masses of their own people. Perhaps the most
remarkable example of what these women have
accomplished is the work of Elizabeth E. Wright,
the founder of Voorhees Industrial School, at

Denmark, South Carolina. She came to us at
Tuskegee, a frail young woman without means
and, as it often seemed, without the physical
strength to carry her through the struggle necessary
to complete her course. She was compelled
to give up for a time and go home until she could
obtain means and strength to go on.

After being graduated at Tuskegee, she became a
teacher in the little town of Denmark, South Carolina,
and, at that place, before she died, succeeded in
building up a school of her own, modelled on that of
Tuskegee Institute. This school stands to-day as a
monument to this young woman's faith and persistence.
It is one of the largest and best equipped
of the industrial schools for Negroes in the Southern
states, and has gained a recognition and support, not
only of the coloured but of the white people in the
community in which it is situated. Having established
the school, Elizabeth Wright literally gave her
life in the effort to support and maintain it, and she
lies buried on the grounds of the school which she
erected with her own life.

The profession of law has enlisted from an early
date a considerable number of talented coloured men
and a few women. The first coloured woman lawyer
was Charlotte Ray, a daughter of Charles Ray, who
was at one time pastor of the famous Shiloh Presbyterian
Church. She graduated from Howard
University about 1872, and was still living in 1908,

I understand, though she was then something over
sixty years of age.

Macon B. Allen was the first coloured attorney
regularly admitted to practice in the United States.
He was admitted to the bar in Maine in 1844.
Robert Morris was admitted to the Boston bar in
1850, on motion of Charles Sumner, where he practised
with marked success until his death in 1882.
He was associated with Mr. Sumner in 1849, in the
famous case before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts,
to test the constitutionality of separate
coloured schools in Massachusetts. John M. Langston
was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1854. The first
coloured man admitted to practice before the Supreme
Court of the United States, was John S. Reck, of
Boston, Massachusetts. He was admitted Feb. I,
1865, on motion of Mr. Sumner.

A few of the coloured men who became Members
of Congress from the Southern states had a legal
training, as well as two or three who have been in
the diplomatic and consular service of the United
States. Among the coloured department clerks
in Washington a surprising number have taken the
law course at Howard University in that city. In
the effort of the American Negro to widen his economic
life, the lawyers of the race are finding a field
for their talents which they have not hitherto had an
opportunity to enter. For instance, in the building
and loan associations; in the mercantile, real estate,

cooperative companies and savings banks of various
kinds that are now everywhere springing up, the
coloured lawyer is finding a clientele far different
from the young coloured men who began the study
of law in the early years following the Civil War,
and looked forward then to a public career, either in
State or national politics as the goal of their ambition.

I have always believed that the stronger the economic
and industrial foundation of the masses of the
race and the more numerous those engaged in gainful
occupations became, the more successful and prosperous
would the professional class among the race
become.

Some mention should be made of the fact that
several Negro lawyers have obtained, either by
election or appointment, a number of minor judicial
positions in which they discharged their duties in an
eminently satisfactory manner. Mifflin W. Gibbs,
for instance, city judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, in
1873, was the first coloured man to be elected
to such a position in the United States. George L.
Ruffin was appointed a judge of a district municipal
court in Massachusetts in 1883. James C. Matthews
was elected a few years ago to a city judgeship, as
a Democrat in the city of Albany, New York. E. M.
Hewlett and R. H. Terrell were appointed by President
Roosevelt as city magistrates in the District
of Columbia; the latter holds his position at the present
writing and is regarded as a very capable and

efficient official. A few assistants to district attorneys,
municipal and Federal, have been given
appointments. In none of these cases have I heard
of a failure.

Another profession in which Negroes have been
making progress in recent years is that of journalism.
The Negro journals were, in certain respects, at
their best before the Civil War, during the period of
the anti-slavery struggle. At that time, when Frederick
Douglass was editor of The North Star, and all
the anti-slavery leaders among the Negro race contributed
more or less to the racial papers, Negro
journals were, for the most part, inspired by high
aims and were a source of inspiration to the masses
of the coloured people in their struggle for freedom.
After emancipation came, the number of these newspapers
increased, but, too frequently, they became
the mere organs of a party or a clique, with no higher
reason for their existence than the temporary success
of some political partisan or the petty spoils that fall
to the lot of the Negro politician.

In recent years, however, the Negro journals,
following the lead of the white journals, have become
less party organs and more newspapers, seeking to
report events and reflect the life and progress of the
whole race. There are at present no less than two
hundred Negro newspapers published in the United
States. Many of them are ably edited.

One hears a great deal in both the Northern and

Southern states of the Negro politician and, incidentally,
of the Negro lawyer and journalist. One hears,
however, very little of the Negro physician and surgeon.
Nevertheless, of all the professions in which
the Negro is engaged, that of medicine is probably
the one in which he has attained the highest degree
of technical skill and the greatest usefulness to the
community in which he lives. In no other direction,
I dare say, has the Negro travelled so far from the
primitive condition and civilisation of his savage
ancestors in Africa.

I was reminded of this fact the more forcibly, a
few years ago, by an incident related to me by Dr.
George C. Hall, of Chicago. In 1905, Dr. Hail was
engaged in holding a surgical clinic before the Alabama
Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Society,
at Mobile. While there he visited the African colony
to which I have already referred, situated a few miles
out from Mobile in what is known as the African
village. He had just come from his lectures and
demonstrations in the city of Mobile, where he had
been the guest of an organisation composed of men
who were engaged in applying the latest results of
modern science to the solution of one of the most
complicated of human problems, namely, the cure
of disease. In a half-hour's ride on the street cars he
found himself in the midst of a settlement of native
Africans, who for fifty years had held themselves and
their descendants apart from the Negroes of Mobile,

and had had as little as possible to do with the white
people about them. Although they were employed
as labourers in the saw-mills nearby, and cultivated
the little patches of ground which they owned, they
had remained, in most other respects, practically
untouched by the civilisation about them.

"I could not help thinking," said Dr. Hall, in
speaking of the incident, "that less than half a century
ago the men with whom I had been conferring,
or their ancestors and ours, were as undeveloped as
these primitive people of the African village. I never
realised before the wonderful opportunities which
our race has had in being thrown into contact with
the science and civilisation of this modern world.
Here we can see our people, practically under our
own eyes, making their way, in a few years, or, at most,
a few generations, from the age of stone to the age of
electricity."

Few people, black or white, realise that in the
Negro race, as it exists to-day in America, we have
representatives of nearly every stage of civilisation,
from that of the primitive African to the highest
modern life and science have achieved. This fact
is at once a result and an indication of the rapidity
with which he has risen.