Somewhere in my growing up in Massachusetts, I remembered learning that the first Black woman to be a doctor lived and worked in my home state. I remembered her name was Rebecca but that's all I could remember. I finally found her, last night, and I thought today would be a perfect day to introduce her to you, if you've not already met.
Please meet Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born in 1831 in Delaware, to Absolum Davis and Matilda Webber. Very little is known about her life. Indeed, I did not know of her Delaware roots.
An aunt in Pennsylvania, who spent much of her time caring for sick neighbors and may have influenced her career choice, raised her. Why? It could be any number of reasons but there were lots of lynchings in those days in Delaware. So were untreated diseases among people of poverty, especially poor Black farmers and sharecroppers.
In any event, life expectancy was not long if you were poor and Black.
By 1852 she had moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts.After attending the prestigious Massachusetts private school, West-Newton English and Classical School, she worked as a nurse for eight years (because the first formal school for nursing only opened in 1873, she was able to perform such work without any formal training).
In 1860, she was admitted to the New England Female Medical College. When she graduated in 1864, Crumpler was the first African American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African American woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College, which merged with Boston University School of Medicine in 1873.
In her Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts, published in 1883 and one of the very first medical publications by an African American, she gives a brief summary of her career path:
"It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. From these doctors I received letters commending me to the faculty of the New England Female Medical College, whence, four years afterward, I received the degree of doctress of medicine."
Dr. Crumpler practiced in Boston for a short while before moving to
Richmond, Virginia, after the Civil War ended in 1865. Richmond, she
felt, would be
"a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled . . . to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored."She joined other black physicians caring for freed slaves who would otherwise have had no access to medical care, working with the Freedmen's Bureau, and missionary and community groups, even though black physicians experienced intense racism working in the postwar South.
"At the close of my services in that city," she explained, "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 lived on Joy Street on Beacon Hill, then a mostly black neighborhood. By 1880 she had moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and was no longer in active practice. Her 1883 book is based on journal notes she kept during her years of medical practice.
I am delighted to learn even this little bit about Dr. Crumpler and feel pleased to know of her Delaware and Massachusetts connections. I can't tell you how often I walked on Joy Street in Boston, having been the former home of the Diocesan Offices, which moved in 1988 after 100 years to Tremont Street, adjacent to the Cathedral.
It feels a privilege to have walked the same neighborhood where Dr. Crumpler lived and tended to those who were sick and had no other means of care. Next time I'm in Boston, I plan to visit her former residence and say a prayer of thanksgiving for her life.
I pray today that her spirit hovers over and informs the other former resident of Massachusetts, that the decisions he makes for the millions of people in his care will be wise, founded on good science and ethics, and devoid of political influence.
Not a dream. It's actually what all of his predecessors have done.
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia.