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They fought slavery, prejudice, and injustice — and changed the face of medicine in America. They invented modern blood-banking, served in the highest ranks of the U.S. government, and much more. In honor of Black History Month, read the inspiring stories of 10 pioneering black physicians.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD (1831 — 1895)

In 1864, after years as a nurse, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman in the United States to receive an MD degree. She earned that distinction at the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Massachusetts — where she also was the institution’s only black graduate. After the Civil War, Crumpler moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she worked with other black doctors who were caring for formerly enslaved people in the Freedmen’s Bureau. While she faced sexism and other forms of harassment, Crumpler ultimately found the experience transformative. "I returned to my former home, Boston, where I entered into the work with renewed vigor, practicing outside, and receiving children in the house for treatment; regardless, in a measure, of remuneration," she wrote.

Crumpler also wrote A Book of Medical Discourses: In Two Parts. Published in 1883, the book addresses children’s and women’s health and is written for “mothers, nurses, and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race.”

Note: No photos of Rebecca Lee Crumpler are known to exist.

James McCune Smith, MD (1813 — 1865)

James McCune Smith, MD, was a man of firsts. In 1837, he became the first black American to receive a medical degree — although he had to enroll at the University of Glasgow Medical School because of racist admissions practices at U.S. medical schools. And that was far from his only groundbreaking accomplishment. He was also the first black person to own and operate a pharmacy in the United States and the first black physician to be published in U.S. medical journals.

Smith used his writing talents to challenge shoddy science, including racist notions of African-Americans. Most notably, he debunked such theories in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Smith was a staunch abolitionist and friend of Frederick Douglass. He contributed to Douglass’ newspaper and wrote the introduction to his book, My Bondage and My Freedom.

Leonidas Harris Berry, MD (1902 — 1995)

Even as a renowned gastroenterologist, Leonidas Harris Berry, MD, faced racism in the workplace. Berry was the first black doctor on staff at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, in 1946, but he had to fight for an attending position there for years. “I have spent many years of crushing disappointment at the threshold of opportunity,” he wrote to the hospital’s trustee board committee in his final plea, “keeping my lamps trimmed and bright for a bride that never came.” He was finally named to the attending staff in 1963 and remained a senior attending physician for the rest of his medical career.

In the 1950s, Berry chaired a Chicago commission that worked to make hospitals more inclusive for black physicians and to increase facilities in underserved parts of the city. But his dedication to equity reached far beyond the clinical setting: He was active in a civil rights group called the United Front that provided protection, monetary support, and other assistance to black residents of Cairo, Illinois, who had been victims of racist attacks. In 1970, he helped organize the Flying Black Medics, a group of practitioners who flew from Chicago to Cairo to bring medical care and health education to members of the remote community.

Charles Richard Drew, MD (1904 — 1950)

Known as the “father of blood banking,” Charles Richard Drew, MD, pioneered blood preservation techniques that led to thousands of lifesaving blood donations. Drew’s doctoral research explored best practices for banking and transfusions, and its insights helped him establish the first large-scale blood banks. Drew directed the Blood for Britain project, which shipped much-needed plasma to England during World War II. Drew then led the first American Red Cross Blood Bank and created mobile blood donation stations that are now known as bloodmobiles. But Drew’s work was not without struggle. He protested the American Red Cross’ policy of segregating blood by race and ultimately resigned from the organization.

Despite his renown for blood preservation, Drew’s true passion was surgery. He was appointed chairman of the department of surgery and chief of surgery at Freedmen’s Hospital (now known as Howard University Hospital) in Washington, D.C. During his time there, he went to great lengths to support young African-Americans pursuing careers in the discipline.

Louis Wade Sullivan, MD (b. 1933)

Louis Wade Sullivan, MD, grew up in the racially segregated rural South in the 1930s. There, he was inspired by his doctor, Joseph Griffin. “He was the only black physician in a radius of 100 miles,” Sullivan said. “I saw that Dr. Griffin was really doing something important and he was highly respected in the community.”

Over the decades, Sullivan became an equally profound source of inspiration. The only black student in his class at Boston University School of Medicine, he would later serve on the faculty from 1966 to 1975. In 1975, he became the founding dean of what became the Morehouse School of Medicine — the first predominantly black medical school opened in the United States in the 20th century. Later, Sullivan was tapped to serve as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he directed the creation of the Office of Minority Programs in the National Institutes of Health’s Office of the Director.

Sullivan has chaired numerous influential groups and institutions, from the President’s Advisory Council on Historically Black Colleges and Universities to the National Health Museum. He is CEO and chair of the Sullivan Alliance, an organization he created in 2005 to increase racial and ethnic minority representation in health care.

Marilyn Hughes Gaston, MD (b. 1939)

In a pivotal experience while working as an intern at Philadelphia General Hospital in 1964, Marilyn Hughes Gaston, MD, admitted a baby with a swollen, infected hand. The baby suffered from sickle cell disease, which hadn’t occurred to Gaston until her supervisor suggested the possibility. Gaston quickly committed herself to learning more about it, and eventually became a leading researcher on the disease, which affects millions of people around the world. She became deputy branch chief of the Sickle Cell Disease Branch at the National Institutes of Health, and her groundbreaking 1986 study led to a national sickle cell disease screening program for newborns. Her research showed both the benefits of screening for sickle cell disease at birth and the effectiveness of penicillin to prevent infection from sepsis, which can be fatal in children with the disease.

In 1990, Gaston became the first black female physician to be appointed director of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Primary Health Care. She was also the second black woman to serve as assistant surgeon general as well as achieve the rank of rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service. Gaston has been honored with every award that the Public Health Service bestows.

Patricia Era Bath, MD (b. 1942)

Interning in New York City in the 1960s sparked a revelation for Patricia Era Bath, MD. Bath, the first African-American to complete an ophthalmology residency, noticed that rates of blindness and visual impairment were much higher at the Harlem Hospital’s eye clinic, which served many black patients, than at the eye clinic at Columbia University, which mostly served whites. That observation spurred her to conduct a study that found twice the rate of blindness among African-Americans compared with whites. Throughout the rest of her career, Bath explored inequities in vision care. She created the discipline of community ophthalmology, which approaches vision care from the perspectives of community medicine and public health.

Bath blazed trails in other ways as well, co-founding the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in 1976, which supports programs that protect, preserve, and restore eyesight. Bath was also the first woman appointed chair of ophthalmology at a U.S. medical school, at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine in 1983. And she was the first black female physician to receive a medical patent in 1988 for the Laserphaco Probe, a device used in cataract surgery.

Herbert W. Nickens, MD (1947 — 1999)

As the first director of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1986, Herbert W. Nickens, MD, set the foundation for promoting improved health among racial and ethnic minority populations across the country. When he left the HHS, Nickens moved to the AAMC, where he was the founding vice president of the AAMC Division of Community and Minority Programs, now known as Diversity Policy and Programs. He led Project 3000 by 2000, which the AAMC launched in 1991 to achieve the goal of enrolling 3,000 students from underrepresented minority groups in U.S. medical schools annually by the year 2000.

“No one in recent memory did more than Herbert Nickens to bridge the painful and persistent diversity gap in medicine," said then-AAMC President Jordan J. Cohen, MD, after Nickens’ death in 1999. The AAMC continues to remember Nickens’ legacy with three namesake awards, honoring outstanding medical students, junior faculty, and individuals who have made significant contributions toward social justice in academic medicine and health care equity.

Alexa Irene Canady, MD (b. 1950)

Alexa Irene Canady, MD, nearly dropped out of college due to a crisis of self-confidence but ultimately went on to achieve dramatic success in medicine. In 1981, she became the first black neurosurgeon in the United States, and just a few years later, she rose to the ranks of chief of neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Michigan.

Canady worked for decades as a successful pediatric neurosurgeon and was ready to retire in Florida in 2001. But she donned her surgical scrubs once again to practice part time at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, where there was a dearth of pediatric neurosurgery services. Canady has been lauded for her patient-centered approach to care, which she said was a boon to her career. “I was worried that because I was a black woman, any practice opportunities would be limited.” But, she noted, “by being patient-centered, the practice growth was exponential.”

Regina Marcia Benjamin, MD, MBA (b. 1956)

Regina Marcia Benjamin, MD, MBA, may be best known for her tenure as the 18th U.S. Surgeon General, during which she served as first chair of the National Prevention Council. The group of 17 federal agencies was responsible for developing the National Prevention Strategy, which outlined plans to improve health and well-being in the United States.

But it’s not just her work at the highest levels of public health that earned her praise. Long before she was appointed “the nation’s doctor” in 2009, Benjamin worked extensively with rural communities in the South. She is the founder and CEO of BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre, Louisiana, which provides clinical care, social services, and health education to residents of the small Gulf Coast town. Benjamin helped rebuild the clinic several more times, including after damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a fire in 2006. Of the clinic, she said she hopes that she is “making a difference in my community by providing a clinic where patients can come and receive health care with dignity.”

New section

JULIA HASKINS, SPECIAL TO AAMCNEWS

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These all sound amazing!

Utopia Falls

It's not every day that we get a sci-fi drama series about young people in the future discovering hip hop and using it as a tool for freedom, but in 2020 that's exactly the kind of out-the-box programming coming to CBC Gem. Utopia Falls is the brainchild of R.T. Thorne, the award-winning filmmaker behind a ton of your favourite music videos (and episodes of Degrassi). With Boi-1da serving as executive music producer and choreography by the iconic Tanisha Scott, this is an Avengers-level assembly of Canadian talent, and I for one am super excited to see their collective vision manifest. It begins streaming on CBC Gem Friday, Feb. 14.

The Negroes Are Congregating

First of all: amazing title. Second of all: if you're in Toronto in March, you should make time to see this play. Written by Natasha Adiyana Morris and celebrating its world premiere at Theatre Passe Muraille in March, The Negroes Are Congregating is a poetic yet scathing deep dive into racism in Canada and around the world. I had a chance to see a workshop production and I'm telling you, this play asks certain questions that will stick with you long after the curtains close.

Transcendent Kingdom

Yaa Gyasi's debut novel Homegoing took the literary world by storm. Transcendent Kingdom is the follow-up to that bestseller, and it tells the tale of a Ghanaian family living in Alabama as they cope with depression, addiction and grief. The protagonist, Gifty, is studying neuroscience at Stanford University, trying to understand the source of her family's troubles. But when science can't provide the answers, she turns to faith. I'm excited to snuggle under my covers and read this one.

Flags of Unsung Countries

The Art Gallery of Southern Manitoba recently made a commitment to prioritizing the work of Black Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) women artists in the Prairies, and they have an exciting lineup on the way. It begins with an exhibit by the brilliant Liz Ikiriko, a Saskatchewan artist now living in Toronto. Flags of Unsung Countries originated at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina but will make its Manitoba debut January 16.

Initiated as an attempt to understand the journey of her father — a Nigerian immigrant living with mental illness in the Prairies — this photographic installation explores questions of migration, ceremony and the concept of home. Ikiriko's work as an artist and curator is constantly inviting viewers to question the relationships and systems that we so often take for granted and this exhibit promises to do much of the same.

Zola

In 2015, the internet was introduced to one of the greatest Twitter storytellers to ever grace the platform: Aziah "Zola" Wells. In a string of 148 tweets, she told the epic tale of a road trip to Florida that includes sugar daddies and pimps, stripping and prostitution, murder and a suicide attempt. Super serious topics, I know, but as told by Wells, it was an edge-of-your-seat social-media thriller that boasted famous fans like Ava DuVernay, Solange Knowles and Missy Elliott. The film version is coming to Sundance later this month. Directed by Janicza Bravo (who's also directed some of your fave episodes of Atlanta and Dear White People) and written by Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris (the man who shook up Broadway with 2018's Slave Play), this movie promises to be a hell of a ride.

Lovecraft Country

Produced by Jordan Peele, you say? That name is all it takes to spark my interest, but this new television series also has a number of other factors in its favour. It stars Jonathan Majors (one of my new favourite actors) alongside Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Aunjanue Ellis and Michael K. Williams, and is a drama-horror that takes place in the 1950s Jim Crow American South (definitely a period ripe with material for horror). Misha Green is the showrunner, and if you ever watched Underground (which was tragically cancelled after just two brilliant seasons) you'll know why this is a very, very good thing. It comes to HBO later this year.

Controlled Damage

Viola Desmond's story deserves all the treatments: novel, major motion picture, rap songs, poems and, of course, the stage. Andrea Scott's play Controlled Damage has its world premiere at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax this February. What better way to celebrate Black History Month than by reliving a Canadian Civil Rights hero's courageous act of bravery?

Love is the Message the Message is Death

Condensing 400 years of history into a seven-minute looped video scored by Kanye West's "Ultralight Beam" sounds like an impossible task. But under the purposeful eye of Arthur Jafa, one finds a collage of images that showcases the nuance, pain, joy, sexuality, spirituality, mess, love and grief of Black life in the United States of America.

Hearing Kanye sing, "This is a God dream, this is a God dream, this is everything," while watching Jafa's meticulously edited array of images is an experience you don't want to miss. The installation is on now at the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal to March 3.

Untitled Fred Hampton Project (formerly known as Jesus Was My Homeboy)

If you don't know the story of Fred Hampton — the young, charismatic Black Panther activist who was identified as a threat by the FBI and assassinated in his home by the police — please do some research before this film drops. His story is one that is both inspiring and tragic, enraging and mobilizing. It needs to be told and seen on the big screen.

Directed by Shaka King (a member of the dream team behind Random Acts of Flyness), produced by Ryan Coogler (oh, you know, just the genius who gave us Black Panther, Creed and Fruitvale Station, no big deal) and starring LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, I am counting down the days until this film arrives. (It's scheduled for August, but since it still doesn't have a name...who knows!)

Soul

Seriously, Disney: can we get an animated movie with Black characters who get to stay human beings for the entirety of the film?

As skeptical as I am, I'm going to give this new one a chance, only because it boasts a cast filled with so many of my faves, including Jamie Foxx, Questlove and Phylicia Rashad. The start of the trailer also hints at some great jazzy numbers and a storyline about following one's artistic passion (I'm always a sucker for narratives like that). It comes to theatres in June.

Corrections

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Boi-1da ccomposed the score for Utopia Falls. The composer is Nikhil Seetharam.Jan 13, 2020 11:55 AM ET

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It’s that simple.

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Black Panther Vol 6 #17 (2017)  //  Marvel Comics

Story: Ta-Nehisi Coates, art: Chris Sprouse, Cover: Brian Stelfreeze

Get the comics here

[Follow SuperheroesInColor faceb / instag / twitter / tumblr / pinterest]

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Pay attention to who’s out here talking that talk and whose out here actually walking that walk around providing support and assistance during Harvey. It’s high time Charlatans like Joel Osteen got dragged for the parasitic scrubs that they are. (x) #houstonstrong

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It’s that simple.

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Fred Hampton: The Revolutionary Black Panther

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They were trying to weaponize us. And that’s why they lost.

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New Video: Dotman x Mr Eazi - Afro Girl 

Already blowing up the airwaves, Dotman has finally dropped the visuals to his hit song “Afro Girl” featuring Mr Eazi.

Produced by Simba Tagz and Mr Kamera, Dotman shows his love for Uganda and Zimbabwe in these stunning visuals which features Uganda’s biggest star Sheebah Karungi who lights up the video with her stunning presence as she plays Dotman’s love interest whose father is sceptical about her dating him until he realises what a gentleman he is.

Directed by Teekay, “Afro Girl” features Mr Eazi and will surely keep you entertained as the buzz for “Afro Girl” doesn’t look set to die down anytime soon. 

Watch, share and enjoy “Afro Girl”…

Afrobeats City Follow @AfrobeatsCity on Facebook | Instagram | Snapchat | Twitter

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“LEVIT8” by @jetmaine ✨ 30x40 acrylic on canvas This is a concept for a comic I’ll be starting in Winter 2017. The name might change so don’t get used to it. I’ve been wanting to use comics and animation to communicate storytelling in a lot of my work and I’m happy I got the resources to do it. Can’t wait for y'all to see my monstrosities in the near future. #supportblackart #jetmaine #acrylicpainting #levit8 #acryliconcanvas #storytelling #blackart #art #artist #blackartist #blkcreatives #artwork #artlover #arteveryday #artislife #conceptualart #artistic #veryblack

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Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011)

“From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890’s to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself.

Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race.

Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian “Nollywood” Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.”

by Robin R. Means Coleman

Get it  now here  

Robin R. Means Coleman is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and in the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Her previous books include African Americans and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor and the edited collection Say It Loud! African Americans, Media and Identity, both published by Routledge, and most recently the co-edited volumeFight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader.

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‘Benefit for Angola’, film showing, Berkeley, California, 1973. Fundraiser for the movement against Portuguese colonialism in Angola (MPLA) featuring music by the Dialectical Sound Ensemble.

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I haven’t made a video in a while so here’s some moody melodies for you from my ig 🌺🌺

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