Early Medical Education for African Americans

From: nlm.nih.gov

Early Medical Education
Prior to the Civil War, most African Americans were enslaved. Very few free African Americans were trained physicians or surgeons, and medical education was not open to people of color in the United States.  Those seeking medical careers as physicians most often received their medical education in Canada or Europe, and a few from medical schools in the North.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans seeking a medical education were faced with difficult prospects.  Few medical schools would admit black students regardless of their academic excellence.

Medical education for those seeking careers as physicians and surgeons was limited to a few black medical colleges including Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and Meharry Medical College, in Nashville, Tennessee both established by whites in 1868 and 1876 respectively, and primarily under the control of white physicians and administrators.

For those achieving a medical degree, specialized studies and hospital privileges were almost unattainable as few hospitals allowed black physicians access for training or to treat patients.  This continued into much of the 20th century, and although some black students were admitted into white medical schools and hospitals, they faced blatant racism, ostracism, and prejudice.

Segregation and Health Care
Organized healthcare for African Americans first developed as a result of the slave owners' need to tend to illness and disease within the enslaved populations on their plantations.

After the Civil War white communities gradually began to establish segregated, white owned and operated hospitals, primarily in the South, to care for the newly freed slaves.  Although they admitted only black patients, these “separate but equal” hospitals were often inadequate, provided substandard care, and rarely provided access for black physicians or nurses.  Segregated hospitals continued to exist well into the 20th century.

Making Their Own Way
As more African Americans obtained medical degrees, black physicians began to respond to racism in American medicine by forming their own medical institutions, teaching hospitals, and medical societies.

Provident Hospital and Training School in Chicago, the first black owned and operated hospital in the United States was established in 1891. Others soon followed including Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School in Philadelphia and Provident Hospital and Free Dispensary in Baltimore. These hospitals provided a higher standard of medical care to black patients and provided education and training for black physicians and nurses. They continued to serve the black community well into the 20th century.

Taylor Lane Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina was founded in 1901 by Dr. Matilda Evans and was the first black hospital in Columbia.  Dr. Evans, pictured above, was the first African American woman physician licensed to practice in the State of South Carolina and treated both black and white patients.  Taylor Lane Hospital was destroyed by fire and eventually established as St. Luke's Hospital and Training School for Nurses.

The National Medical Association was formed in 1895, in direct response to the exclusion of black physicians from the American Medical Association.

They were instrumental in leading the fight for better health care and greater opportunities in medicine to all enfranchised Americans. Today they continue to represent the needs of African American physicians across the country.

Even in the recent 20th century, African Americans have found a need to establish organizations to address current issues facing black physicians.  The Society of Black Academic Surgeons founded in 1989 was established to address the small numbers of African American Surgeons pursuing academic careers and to provide a forum for scholarship in collaboration with the leading departments of surgery in the United States.

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The Maryland School for the Blind

FROM: mdschblind.org

In 1853, Franklin Pierce had just been elected as the 14th President of the United States, Abe Lincoln was still a young congressman in Illinois, and most people would scoff at the very suggestion that, in the very near future, Americans would turn against Americans in a bloody Civil War. It was also the year that our school, known as the Maryland Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, first opened its doors in downtown Baltimore.

Starting with a small group of students, the school had three superintendents in the first 11 years. The first superintendent was David E. Loughery who was a blind graduate of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind. It then settled into a period of tremendous growth under the direction of Fredrick Douglas Morrison, who was superintendent from 1864 to 1904. A national leader in his profession, instrumental in the founding of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind and an early proponent of a then controversial new system called "braille", Mr. Morrison lead the nation by example.

In 1868 he moved the campus to much larger quarters on North Avenue and changed the name to The Maryland School for the Blind. In 1872, when segregation was still the law of the land, he was a founder of The Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf and served as the superintendent of both schools. John Frances Bledsoe became superintendent in 1906.

In 1908 Mr. Bledsoe moved the school to its present location in the Northeast corner of Baltimore City. The leadership at The Maryland School for the Blind reads like a Who’s Who in Education for the Blind in America. Francis M. Andrews, Herbert Joseph Wolfe, and Richard L. Welsh were all internationally recognized innovators who moved the school forward into the 20th century.

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School for Colored Deaf and Dumb Children

Excerpted from: museumofdisability.org and niagarafallsundergroundrailroad.org

Just before the Civil War, Dr. Platt H. Skinner, a pioneer educator of the disabled, operated three schools for African-American children who were blind, deaf, or both. An ardent abolitionist, Dr. Skinner was forced to move his school twice. The second school, the subject of this book, was located in Suspension Bridge, New York at a terminus of the Underground Railroad, on which Dr. Skinner may have been a conductor.

Significance: From 1858-61, Dr. P.H. Skinner and his wife Jarusha Skinner kept a school in Niagara City for African American children who were deaf, dumb, or blind. They specifically espoused ideals of equality and abolitionism. Students included several children born in Canada.

Description: No known image or verbal description of this site exists. Hints from the diary of Marcus Adams, local judge, suggest that it may have been located on the east side of Lewiston Avenue, just south of the Colt Block.

On January 4, 1858, Adams noted, “Deaf and Dumb school about to open in Glover Brick house.” The only Glover listed in Childs’ 1869 Director (the first directory for Niagara Falls) was Reuben Glover, who owned a cooper shop on Niagara Avenue in Suspension Bridge (shown on the 1875 Atlas). A note by transcriber Thomas B. Lovell, however, indicated that “Glover’s Hotel is what is now the United States Hotel opposite Silberberg’s block.” The 1869 directory noted that Silberberg had a readymade clothing store on Lewiston Avenue (now Main Street). In 1875, the Atlas showed Silberberg on Lewiston Avenue three doors north of Ontario Street. Across the street, on the northwest corner of Ontario and Lewiston, stood the Union Hotel. It is possible that this building was the original Glover Brick House and that it later became the United States Hotel.

The 1860 map of Niagara Falls, however, located the United States Hotel just south of the Colt Block on Lewiston Avenue. This location would be consistent with other clues in Marcus Adams’ diary. On November 7, 1854, he noted, “Col. Fisk has sold the two corner lots this side Glovers’ to the [sic] Mr. Colts for $3000.00. This is the most important sale that has ever taken place here.” On November 15, Adams added, “Loud complaints made about order of trustees to grade down Lewiston Ave. to a strait grade from R.R. to Glovers Hotel. But it is right in principle.” And on August 14, 1855, he noted, “Swan has bought the place next to Glover’s about which there has there has been so much contention.” Further research in directories, deeds, maps, and assessment records could probably pinpoint this site accurately.

Discussion: The Skinner School for Colored Deaf, Dumb and Blind Children is one of the most remarkable institutions in this whole survey, unique in the U.S. for focusing on African American children—many of them born in Canada—who were deaf, dumb, or blind. Michael Boston, from the State University of New York at Brockport, has done considerable research on Skinner and his school, and we are indebted to his publications for much of the background on this site. The 1860 U.S. census listed nine students living in a “School for Mutes.” Six were noted as “deaf and dumb”:

Samuel Brown, age 18; Isaac Brown, age 16; Jane Sly, age 14; and Christian Hartwell, age 13, all born in Canada, HannahPolk, age 17, born in New Jersey; and Eliza Wilson, age 5, born in New York State. Three were blind: James Smith, age 13, and Nancy Smith, age 10, both born in Canada, and Samuel Stevison, age 17, born in Pennsylvania.

They lived in a household headed by Platt H. Skinner, age 30, born in New York. Although the 1860 census listed him as blind, he was not. His wife Jerusha, age 29, was, however, deaf. Their son Henry, age 4, had been born in the District of Columbia. Mary Smith, age seventeen and a “teacher of the blind,” born in New Jersey, with personal property valued at $500, was herself blind. Donnelly Dunn, age 40, born in Ireland, a printer, also lived in this household, perhaps working on Skinner’s newspaper, The Mute and the Blind, “published for and by colored blind, deaf and mute students at a Niagara Falls school.”Marcus Adams’ diary gave a brief running account of this opening of this school in January 1858, complete with his almost immediate reservations:

Jan. 4, 1858. “Deaf and Dumb school about to open in Glover Brick house.”

Jan. 6. “Donation for Mr. Crittenden [Presbyterian minister] was quite an affair. Large company, but few from the stone [Congregational] church folks, none from the Falls, or the other side. Great abundance of refreshments. All our congregation present, with few exceptions. Mr. Wells made himself quite conspicuous. Mr. Wallace enjoyed it. Dr. Skinner, wife and baby were the main attraction as the wife was a mute. He introduced her with the sign language. Deaf and Dumb school opens soon.”

Jan.10. Sunday. Mr. Skinner, founder of the Deaf and Dumb school, came into the S.S. bringing a little colored girl whom he found in Canada. He made some nteresting remarks, and gave illustrations of sign language. (But fear him.)

Jan. 25. “Found an article in Frank Leslie’s newspaper which goes strongly against Dr. Skinner, as an imposter at Washington, and this Col. Fisk sustains in a letter to his wife. So our Deaf and Dumb sch. will probably blow out.

They lived in a neighborhood that included laborers, a jeweler, bead makers, a school teacher, a gardener, servants, a gatekeeper, a butcher, carpenters, joiners, a carriage maker, a grocer, gentlemen, two physicians and surgeons, blacksmiths, a custom house officer (Robert Trafford), several railroad agents, a milliner, a land speculator (James Vedder (with $15,000 of real estate), post master, and New School Presbyterian clergyman (John F. Severance). Neighbors had been born in various states in the U.S., as well as in Canada, parts of Germany, England, and Ireland.

To understand both why this school existed and why there were such immediate suspicions about Dr. Skinner, we need a little background. Platt Henry Skinner was born was born on March 11, 1824 in Clinton, New York. He moved at some point to Prattsburgh, New York, and attended Oberlin College from 1843-1846. On July 13, 1854, Skinner married Jerusha M. Hills, daughter of Allen and Ruth Benton Hills, from Fabius, New York. Hills was born deaf in 1831, along with three of her five siblings. Jerusha Hill had attended the New York Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, and Reverend E.M. Gallaudet officiated at their marriage. The Skinners had a son Henry, born about 1854, who could hear.

In 1856, Platt and Jerusha Skinner arrived in Washington, D.C., with five deaf children, all African American, all born in Canada. With the help of Amos Kendall, one of Jackson’s former cabinet members, whose deaf wife encouraged him to support deaf education, Skinner started a school for deaf children on the south side of G Street, between 20th and 21st. Beginning in June, the National Era, an antislavery paper in Washington, carried several articles on the Skinner school, including requests for trustees. By November 1856, Skinner was ready to share the burden: “Principal for said Institution is wanted, to fill the place of the present occupant of that situation. The salary is nothing; the duties are, incessant watchfulness, care, toil, and labor, night and day; the praise and glory are slander and contumely. Position given immediately.” E.M. Gallaudet, son of the famous educator for the deaf Thomas Gallaudet, answered Skinner’s plea. His mother, widow of Thomas Gallaudent, served as matron. “The reputation of Mr. Gallaudet is such, and the character of the matron and teachers is so high, that none need for to confide children to their care. They will enter a home, and become a part of the family of the superintendent,” noted the National Era on July 30, 1857. Directors of the school included Hon. Amos Kendall, President; William Stickney, Secretary; G.W. Riggs, Treasurer; William H. Edes, Judson Mitchell, J.C. McGuire, David A. Hall, and Byron Sunderland.9  On January 21, 1858, the National Era contained a note that “the Columbia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, will hold an exhibition in the old Hall of Representatives, this (Thursday) evening. Mr. Gallaudet, the Principal, will deliver an address.” Amos Kendall, president, chaired the meeting, and “the pupils were examined, with a view to show their proficiency in sign language. The blind also read from books printed with raised letters, and the evening passed off pleasantly, leaving an excellent impression upon the minds of the great crowd present.”

In June 1858, Congress appropriated $3000 to educated deaf, dumb, and blind children in D.C., most likely in direct support of the Skinner school. Meanwhile, Kendall and others accused Skinner of neglecting his charges. Skinner went to court at least twelve times to defend himself and get custody of the five children he had brought from New York State. He was being prosecuted, he argued, not for neglect but for being a northerner with abolitionist views. Eventually, his school was burned down, and he, Jerusha, their son Henry, and a teacher fled to Baltimore before settling in Niagara Falls in January 1858.

Skinner’s goal in Niagara Falls was to educate African American deaf children, those that had no other resources. As Michael Boston noted, quoting The First Semi-Annual Report of the School for the Instruction of the Colored, Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, It [the new school] is not intended to take any child whose education is provided for in any other way. The school was at first established for the children of fugitives; but, since its commencement, it has been thought best to open its doors to all such mute and blind colored children as are not provided for otherwise, as far as the means of the school will permit. The command given is, "Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." -- This command seems to reach the lowest of all God's creation. . . . The credentials which are necessary for admission into this school, then, are,
 1st. A dark face.
 2nd. Deaf ears and a mute tongue, or blind eyes.
 3d. That the state or county in which they live has not provided for their education.

Skinner traveled from church to church, all over western New York and eastern Ontario, taking some of his students with them to demonstrate their progress, including the use of Braille and sign language. The Congregational Church of Niagara City (Suspension Bridge) and Presbyterian churches in Niagara Falls and Lockport gave him their endorsement.

But stories about possible abuse followed Skinner from Washington, D.C. and help explain Marcus Adams’ concern. On December 26, 1858, the Syracuse Central City Courier published an article listing letters published by the Niagara Herald, critical of Skinner, from Rev. Byron Sunderland, Rev. P.H. Gurley, and Hon. Amos Kendall, all of Washington, D.C., along with criticisms from Sidney Dean, member of Congress from Connecticut, and Rev. L.M. Pease of the Five Points Mission in New York City. Finally, the elders of the Presbyterian Church in Niagara City cautioned that “in their judgment he is unworthy of the confidence and contributions of Christians and philanthropists.”

As Michael Boston has noted, Skinner used the Niagara Gazette to reply to the charges in the Herald. In eight articles published from November 1858 to January 1859, he argued that his attackers did not know him and acted simply as tools of Amos Kendall, opposing his efforts to educate black children. The charges had all been disproven in court, Skinner reported, and that should settle it.  By 1862, Skinner and his wife and son had moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where they continued to operate their school until Skinner’s death of typhoid pneumonia, age 42, on January 1, 1866. Jerusha Skinner and her son Henry H. Skinner moved to Elmira, where she lived until her death. Henry Skinner, who could hear, later married Margaret
Getz, who was deaf.

How do we evaluate Dr. Platt H. Skinner? Was he a dishonest scoundrel or a whole souled abolitionist, dedicated to improving the lives of the most forgotten Americans? Michael Boston summed up his legacy: In spite of his ability to evoke strong emotions in his hearers, Platt Skinner, with his wife Jerusha, “sincerely endeavored to educate their pupils, contributing toward making them more involved citizens. They were engaged in a self-sacrificing, unpopular task of assisting a much-despised race and an unfortunate and neglected group within that race. They should be commended and remembered for their labors.”

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The Struggle to Educate Black Deaf Schoolchildren in Washington, D.C

.By Sandra Jowers-Barber

African American deaf children of school age in the District of Columbia began that struggle after an early, but brief, promise of educational integration. The Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind was established by Amos Kendall in the district in 1856.A year later, it was incorporated by an act of Congress.

On February 16,1857, Kendall secured the passage of another act that granted an allowance of one hundred and fifty dollars a year for the maintenance and tuition of each child received in the institution from the district.
That same year Kendall offered Edward Miner Gallaudet, by letter,the position of superintendent of the Columbia Institution.

Gallaudet’s background was above reproach. His father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, co-founded the first American school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. His deaf mother, Sophia, was one of his father’s first students. Gallaudet and his mother came to Washington together. She took the position of housemother to the students.When the school opened, an estimated twenty deaf and ten blind students were expected from the district and an unknown number from Maryland.

Among the students that Gallaudet was preparing to direct were a few who were Black. This was an unusual situation for this period. Before the Civil War, Black people, both deaf and hearing, struggled to obtain a formal education. Because it was a criminal offense in some states to educate enslaved people, those enslaved persons who learned to read, like Frederick Douglass, concealed that fact. However,the pre–Civil War Columbia Institution accepted Black students, but their numbers were always small. Many came because of the intervention of wealthy white patrons. Gallaudet received numerous requests for assistance and generally responded positively to them by accepting the youth at the Kendall School. Gallaudet clearly saw the school’s mission as providing education for all deaf students when he initially accepted both races. He noted in the "History of the College for the Deaf" that there had been “colored pupils since the early days of the school.”

Although Black and white students had separate sleeping and eating accommodations, all of them were taught together in the classroom.

Excerpted from: academia.edu

IMAGE: Edward Miner Gallaudet

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Satterlee U.S.A. General Hospital

First of the Federal government's new Pavilion Hospitals   Satterlee Hospital, located in West Philadelphia, was one of the two largest military hospitals in the North, and the first of the Federal government's new pavilion hospitals.   Author and artist Frank Taylor described it in 1913 in his book, "Philadelphia in the Civil War".   "The site was then in the open country. The ground was about 90 feet above tide level, sloping into the valley of a small creek, thus receiving good drainage. The open portion along Baltimore Avenue was used as a parade, and after the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg was covered with tents for the wounded soldiers.   "The Administration Building occupied the center of the enclosure. The wards were furnished with 3,124 beds In addition to the hospital buildings proper quarters were provided for a host of surgeons, attendants, nurses, guards, musicians, cooks, printers and other essential employees.   "Much of the heavier, more trying work at this and other hospitals was done by male assistants known as 'contract men'.   "A good military band, under Prof. Theodore Hermann, provided daily concerts and music for the dress parades and dirges for the dead.   "Always hovering above their charges i the hospital wards were the Sisters of Charity, forty-two in number, under the orders of Mother Mary Gonzaga Grace. These nurses were not paid, but the Government reimbursed for their services the order to which they belonged."

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Freedmen's Hospital

From: Cultural Tourism D.C.

Freedmen's Hospital, the predecessor to Howard University Hospital, was established during the Civil War to address the needs of thousands of African Americans who poured into the city seeking freedom. An initiative of the federal government, it was quickly incorporated into Howard University, eventually developing into a first-rate medical campus. The current building on the site is the Seeley G. Mudd Building of the Howard University College of Medicine, containing classrooms and offices.

The hospital for freedmen was established in 1862 by the secretary of war on land bounded by R, S, 12th, and 13th streets, NW. It was officially named Freedmen's Hospital in 1863. Dr. Alexander T. Augusta (1825-1890), a surgeon of the U.S. Army and a major, was placed in charge of the hospital. He was one of eight black doctors then commissioned in the U.S. Army. The hospital's original one-story frame buildings were razed in 1865 for new quarters on Vermont Avenue, NW, between L and M streets. Another move occurred later that same year to Campbell Hospital, located on the northeast corner of Seventh and Boundary (Florida Avenue) streets. In 1869 the hospital moved to property owned by Howard University at the corner of Fifth and W streets, NW. The hospital also became the teaching hospital for the university.

After Dr. Augusta's tenure ended in 1877, the next major physician to head the hospital was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931), who led the staff from 1894 to 1898. Dr. Williams was followed by Dr. William A. Warfield, Jr., and then Dr. Charles R. Drew.

In 1908, a more state-of-the-art facility was built on College Street, and a tuberculosis annex was completed on Bryant Street in 1941. Both of those buildings stand today, occupied by Howard University offices and the College of Nursing, respectively.

In 1975, Freedmen's Hospital was renamed Howard University Hospital and moved to Georgia and Florida avenues, NW, the former site of Griffith Stadium.

FROM: http://www.culturaltourismdc.org/things-do-see/freedmens-hospital-african-american-heritage-trail

IMAGE: Sketch of Freedmen's Village, printed in "Harper's Weekly", May 7, 1864

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