Embedded Files
REBECCA LEE CRUMPLER, MD
REBECCA LEE CRUMPLER, MD
Crumpler was the first African American woman to earn a Medical Degree. In 1883 Crumpler published Book of Medical Disclosures. The book aimed to educate the black community, especially mothers and nurses, about ways to prevent and treat basic ailments. Later, 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.
Learn more about the Freedmen's Bureau here
THE DRY
THE DRY
The Dry was a predominantly Black farming community in southeast Colorado founded in the early 1900s.
The history of The Dry dates back to the early 20th century. Around 1915, Josephine and Lenora Rucker — two Black women — took advantage of the Enlarged Homestead Act and moved from Nicodemus, Kansas (the first all-Black town west of the Mississippi River) to Otero County with the goal of creating, as Nelson put it, a “Black utopia free of discrimination.”
The Enlarged Homestead Act allowed citizens to acquire parcels of 160 acres from the public domain, and gave land ownership opportunities to a wider range of US citizens, including women and people of color.
Despite challenging conditions, the families of The Dry persevered, transformed the landscape of southeast Colorado, established a community that existed outside of a racially segregated America, and forged a legacy of freedom, family and resilience.
YELLOW FEVER
YELLOW FEVER
Medical community thought Black people immune to the Yellow Fever. Even though Black folx were dying from Yellow Fever, and knew this “immunity” to be untrue, they volunteered as nurses, gravediggers, etc. out of civic duty to help the sick. Matthew Carey, a prominent columnist, accused Black people of stealing from sick patients--these accusations largely unfounded. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, Black leaders and former slaves, published the first copy-written and Black authored publication in America, as a Rebuttal. Sarah Bass Allen was a black nurse who cared for Yellow Fever Victims
DEARFIELD GHOST TOWN
DEARFIELD GHOST TOWN
The townsite, 11 miles west of Wiggins, is the only remaining Colorado example of the national African-American colonization movement inspired by Booker T. Washington. It was one of fourteen colonies, or rural towns, established in the West to provide Americans of African descent with the opportunity to own and work their own land. By 1917, sixty African-American families worked its 15,000 acres.
The town boasted a boarding house, numerous stores, a concrete block factory, a blacksmith shop, churches, and its own telephone service. Oliver Toussaint Jackson, an African-American leader and entrepreneur in Colorado from the early 1900s until his death in 1948, founded Dearfield in 1910 when he filed a homestead claim for the initial 160 acres of land.
NURSE TRAILBLAZERS
NURSE TRAILBLAZERS
Harriet Tubman
Best known as an abolitionist and conductor of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman also made significant contributions in nursing. In addition to caring for the people she rescued from slavery, she served as a nurse for the Union Army, traveling to South Carolina to tend to sick and wounded Black soldiers and those newly liberated from enslavement. This passion for care continued on after the war, when she established the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged & Indigent Negroes in 1908, where she cared for its residents until her death in 1913.
Mary Eliza Mahoney
While many African Americans served as nurses before her, Mary Ezra Mahoney often carries the distinction of being the first Black nurse in history to earn a professional nursing license in the U.S. and the first to graduate from an American nursing school. Born to freed slaves, she worked as janitor, cook, washerwoman and nurse’s aide over the course of 15 years at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, according to the National Women’s History Museum. At the age of 33, she entered the hospital’s nursing program and graduated 16 months later. As the first professionally trained and licensed Black nurse, she championed increased access to nursing education and fought against discrimination in the profession throughout her career, supporting the creation of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908.
Learn more here
PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT TRAILBLAZERS
PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT TRAILBLAZERS
PRENTISS LEE HARRISON, PA-C
PRENTISS LEE HARRISON, PA-C
Harrison was the nation’s first African American Physician Assistant (PA). Harrison was reared and attended high school in Texas. He completed high school in 1961 and enlisted in the US Army where he was trained as a medical corpsman. As a student and graduate of the Duke University PA Program, he helped educate African American physicians about the PA concept. He did this by attending and exhibiting at their local and national medical society meetings. After a number of years caring for patients with general medical problems, he focused his efforts on caring for the needs of those with HIV infection. These experiences would eventually lead to his interest in pain management. Even while busy with patient care and research, he always found the time to precept students enrolled in various Texas PA Programs. Before retirement, Harrison was the chief operations officer of the I-10 Family Clinic which he opened in 2004.
JOYCE C. NICHOLS, PA
JOYCE C. NICHOLS, PA
Nichols was the first female graduate of a PA program was Mrs. Nichols. In 1968 she fought for entry into the newly perceived ”male profession”. She was the first minority to serve on the AAPA Board of Directors, responsible for the establishment of the AAPA Minority Affairs Committee, and chaired the initial committee. She was involved in the writing of the first by-laws for the AAPA. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Academy of Physician Assistants. She has been recognized for her community activism with the Nancy Susan Reynolds Award for Advocacy, Durham, North Carolina proclaimed December 2, 1991 as “Joyce C.Nichols Day” and the 1996 AAPA Paragon “Humanitarian of the Year Award”.
“Trying to understand a historical problem without knowing its history is like trying to understand a medical problem without eliciting a patient’s full medical history. You’re doomed to failure.”
Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid
PHYSICAL THERAPY TRAILBLAZERS
PHYSICAL THERAPY TRAILBLAZERS
Leon Anderson Jr., PT
Leon Anderson Jr., PT
Anderson held 15 elected positions in the APTA, including chair of the APTA Advisory Council on Minority Affairs. In 1971, he was elected to the APTA Board of Directors, the first Black PT to serve in that position. He later became to founding President of the American Academy of Physical Therapy (AAPT), an organization supporting black and other under-represented groups in physical therapy.
Mary McKinney Edmonds, PT, PhD, FAPTA
Mary McKinney Edmonds, PT, PhD, FAPTA
Edmonds studied how social class affected patients’ experiences with health and healthcare. She founded the PT program at Cleveland State University, was dean of Bowling Green State University’s College of Health and Community Service, was provost at Stanford University and professor in the Stanford Medical School.
Edmonds was a member of the APTA Commission on Accreditation (a precursor to the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education) and the leading voice for autonomous accreditation from the American Medical Association. She was the first black physical therapist to be selected as a Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the APTA.
On creating pathways for more PTs from minority populations:
"We need to get down in the elementary schools to try to get more minority physical therapists. We need not just Black … How you do that is to get them motivated really early and keep them from being shuffled into vocational programs and programs that are not going to get them there, and also to get into the community colleges and get them on the proper tracks."
DR. CHARLES BLACKWOOD
DR. CHARLES BLACKWOOD
Dr. Blackwood was the first African American to graduate from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1947.
He was a Coloradan born on September 25, 1921 in Trinidad, CO. He entered medical school in 1943 and could only sit certain places in the lecture hall and his living arrangements were separated from the rest of his classmates. Nevertheless, Dr. Blackwood graduated in the top 10 of his class.
After graduation and internship in New York, he completed a two-year residency training in Medicine at Colorado General and Denver General. During this time, he was the only African American to serve as Police Surgeon for the Denver Police Force.
Upon completing his residency, Dr. Blackwood became the Supreme Physician for the American Woodmen in Denver, Colorado and started his private practice. He also was appointed to the staff of Colorado General Hospital as an instructor in the medical clinic and was on the staff of General Rose Hospital. He then served three years with the United States Air Force from 1952-1955. A highlight of his Air Force service was that he opened the Radiology Department at Hamilton Air Force Base, Marin County, California. He was the first African American physician on staff at St. Luke’s.
He was the first African American clinical professor of medicine at University of Colorado School of Medicine.
During Dr. Blackwood’s years of practice, he had many patients who could not pay for their treatment, but he never turned them away. There are still patients who talk about his kindness, compassion, and the great care that they received from Dr. Blackwood.
After retiring from his clinical practice, he organized the Blackwood Institute that focused on AIDS project and began writing a book on Holistic Medicine. He died August 11, 1993. His funeral was held at a historic site in Five Points and then he was buried where he was born, in Trinidad, Colorado.
Dr. Clarence Fitzhugh Holmes
Louis Armstrong
HARLEM OF THE WEST
HARLEM OF THE WEST
Did you know the Harlem of the West is located right here in Denver? The Five Points Neighborhood is the first predominantly African American neighborhood dating back to the 1860’s with pioneer miners, cowboys, and railroaders. It surrounds the intersection of Washington Street, 27th Street, 26th Avenue and Welton Street located northeast of downtown Denver.
The neighborhood home to the first African American dentist to join the Denver Dental Society, Dr. Clarence Fitzhugh Holmes. During the Depression, he performed free extractions for people.
In the 30’s to the 50’s was home to over fifty bars and clubs, where some of the greatest Jazz musicians performed such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Mile Davis, and others.
Check out Five Point Business this month like free BIPOC yoga classes Wednesdays and Saturdays at the anti-racist and community-focused studio Urban Sanctuary
Or watch amazing Jazz artists perform during Jazz Roots on February 17th and February 24th!
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse