From Medicine to Governing: The Political Rise of Four Remarkable Black Female Physicians
Images courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Four Black women of medicine to inspire us all during Black History Month
The path to a medical career has always been fraught for women, but even more so for women of color. Still, there are an impressive number of Black women who have not only overcome racial bias to practice medicine, but have also risen through the ranks to become leaders in the political sphere as well. Here are four women to celebrate during Black History Month.
Regina Marcia Benjamin: A Presidential Pick for America’s Top Doctor
One of the most remarkable things about Regina Marcia Benjamin, MD, is that despite ascending to one of the most prominent roles in medicine—that of U.S. Surgeon General—she has never forgotten the people she served in rural Alabama.
Dr. Benjamin earned her medical degree from the University of Alabama, and then served as medical director of several nursing homes before embarking on a medical mission to Honduras in 1993. Upon her return, she set up the BayouClinic in the small Alabama fishing town of Bayou La Batre, where over 80 percent of her patients lived below the poverty line. There, Dr. Benjamin provided desperately-needed health care services for a largely underserved community. News of her humanitarian efforts made it all the way to the White House and, in 2009, she was tapped to serve as the 18th U.S. Surgeon General under President Barack Obama.
Donna M. Christian-Christensen: The First Woman Physician in Congress
Donna M. Christian-Christensen, MD, initially thought she was going to be a nurse. Everything changed, however, when she picked up a pamphlet. Dr. Christian-Christensen says, “One day, I got a United Negro College Fund booklet about encouraging young minorities to go into medicine. I really picked it up for a friend of mine, but I read it, and I changed my mind overnight. I decided to go to medical school.” She went on to earn a medical degree from the George Washington University School of Medicine.
A second major shift happened her sophomore year of medical school: Dr. Christian-Christensen offered her medical services at a Washington DC-based political event called the Poor People’s Campaign. There, she treated a young woman with a sexually transmitted disease. This experience served as a catalyst for her interest in adolescent medicine and she rotated through psychiatry, pediatrics, and obstetrics-gynecology before choosing family practice.
The Poor People’s Campaign did more than just ignite her medical career—it also stoked an interest in politics. In 1996, Dr. Christian-Christensen was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the Virgin Islands. She served nine consecutive terms and was committed to influencing not just health care policy, but the quality of life of her constituents.
More about Dr. Christian-Christensen
Ethel D. Allen: From ‘Ghetto Practitioner’ to Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
For Ethel D. Allen, MD, medicine and politics went hand in hand. While studying chemistry in college, Dr. Allen ran for council president and lost by only two votes—one of them being her own.
Dr. Allen was admitted into the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she became one of only 50 African Americans to earn a degree between 1949 and 1978. There, she was also the only woman (and second African American) in the Internal Medicine Society, and the sole woman in the Obstetrics-Gynecology Society. All of this occurred while peers chastised her for ‘depriving a man of the chance to become a doctor.’
Dr. Allen went on to practice medicine in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods and was quickly dubbed the ‘ghetto practitioner.’ This experience convinced her that her constituents needed better political representation. Over the next decade, Dr. Allen was elected to the Philadelphia City Council before ultimately being appointed Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In 1975, she was named one the nation's twelve outstanding women politicians by Esquire Magazine. As for her political stance, Dr. Allen once described herself as a BFR, or Black Female Republican, describing it as, “an entity as rare as a black elephant and just as smart.”
Edith Irby Jones: First Woman President of the National Medical Association
As the first black student to attend racially-mixed high school classes in Arkansas, and the first black student at the University of Arkansas’s medical school, Edith Irby Jones, MD, was no stranger to making headlines.
Despite many setbacks, Dr. Jones received her medical degree and became the first woman elected president of the National Medical Association in 1985. In her inaugural speech as president, Dr. Jones said:
"We give little when we give only our material possessions. It is when we give of ourselves that we truly give—the long challenging hours with patients who can pay and those who cannot pay, the agony of sharing the hurts of families with the death of loved ones, the observations of dehumanizing effects of seeing the jobless, the crushed ambitions, and the sharing when all we have to hold on to is the 'being within' to inspire the young to take up our role.”
Sources
Regina Marcia Benjamin
Donna M. Christian-Christensen
Ethel D. Allen
Edith Irby Jones
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