Harriet A. Rice

Harriet A. Rice was born in Newport in 1866, and lived in the family home at 75 Spring Street for much of her life. She graduated from Rogers High School, and became the first African American to graduate from Wellesley College in 1887. She earned her medical degree from New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston around 1891 and received advanced medical training at New York Infirmary.

Unable to find a position at an American hospital, she joined the famous social worker and women’s suffrage leader Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago, providing medical treatment to poor families. At the start of World War I, she left for France to serve as a physician in military hospitals. On July 1919, the French Embassy presented Dr. Rice the National Medal of French Gratitude for her outstanding service treating wounded French soldiers between 1915 and 1918. Following the war, Dr. Rice practiced medicine in Newport and Boston.