The history of African American doctors in history is a story of brilliance forged against impossible odds. For centuries, Black medical pioneers have transformed medicine in the United States, often while fighting the very institutions that tried to keep them out. From operating rooms to surgeon general appointments, these trailblazers conducted groundbreaking research, opened hospitals when they were turned away from others and trained generations of doctors who followed in their footsteps.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), these African American doctors in history “broke barriers and shattered stereotypes” while improving the health of millions. Their stories are not just Black history; they are American medical history. The legacy these Black medical pioneers built remains essential to closing today’s health equity gaps. Below are some of the most influential African American doctors whose contributions still shape healthcare today.
1. Daniel Hale Williams, MD (1856 – 1931)
Daniel Hale Williams is widely credited with performing one of the world’s first successful open-heart surgeries on July 10, 1893, according to the National Library of Medicine. Operating without modern anesthetics, antibiotics or blood transfusions, Williams successfully repaired the pericardium of stab-wound victim James Cornish at Provident Hospital in Chicago. Cornish lived for at least 20 years after the procedure.
Williams also founded Provident Hospital in 1891, the first non-segregated hospital and nursing school in the United States, per Jackson State University. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association for Black physicians who were barred from the American Medical Association. In 1913, he became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.
2. Selwyn M. Vickers, MD (b. 1957)
In September 2022, Selwyn Vickers became the first African American president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, one of the nation’s leading cancer hospitals. An internationally recognized pancreatic cancer surgeon and researcher, Vickers is also a pioneer in health disparities research who helped establish Enhancing Minority Participation in Clinical Trials (EMPaCT) and the Center for Healthy African American Men, an academic-community partnership.
Before joining MSK, Vickers served as senior vice president for medicine and dean of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine. He is a past president of the American Surgical Association and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Reflecting on legacy, Vickers told Memorial Sloan Kettering that everyone has someone who “made sacrifices for you to be where you are today.”
3. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD (1831 – 1895)
In 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman in the United States to earn an MD, graduating from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, where she was also the only Black graduate. After the Civil War, she relocated to Richmond, Virginia, to provide medical care to formerly enslaved people through the Freedmen’s Bureau, despite facing intense sexism and racism.
Crumpler later returned to Boston, where she dedicated her practice to women and children, with a focus on nutrition and preventative medicine. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses, one of the earliest medical texts authored by a Black physician. According to the National Library of Medicine, Crumpler dedicated her book to “mothers, nurses and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race.” Crumpler remains one of the most celebrated Black female doctors in American history.
4. Patricia Era Bath, MD (1942 – 2019)
Patricia Era Bath was the first African American to complete an ophthalmology residency. While interning in New York City in the 1960s, she observed that rates of blindness were dramatically higher among Black patients at Harlem Hospital than at Columbia University’s eye clinic, which sparked decades of research on disparities in vision care, according to the AAMC.
Bath created the discipline of community ophthalmology and, in 1976, co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. Women’s History notes that, in 1988, she became the first Black female physician to receive a medical patent for the Laserphaco Probe, a revolutionary device used in cataract surgery. She also became the first woman appointed chair of ophthalmology at a U.S. medical school at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine in 1983.
5. James McCune Smith, MD (1813 – 1865)
Among the most foundational African American doctors in history, James McCune Smith holds the distinction of being the first African American to earn a medical degree, according to the AAMC. Because U.S. medical schools refused to admit him on the basis of his race, Smith traveled to Scotland and earned his MD from the University of Glasgow in 1837. He returned to New York City, where he opened the first Black-owned and operated pharmacy in the United States and became the first Black physician to be published in U.S. medical journals.
Beyond his medical practice at the Free Negro Orphan Asylum, Smith was a fierce abolitionist and close friend of Frederick Douglass. He used his scientific expertise to refute the racist pseudoscience of his era, including claims made in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. He also wrote the introduction to Douglass’ autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.
6. Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD (b. 1961)
In 2014, Valerie Montgomery Rice became the sixth president of Morehouse School of Medicine – and the first woman to lead the freestanding medical institution that Louis Sullivan founded decades earlier. A renowned reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist, Montgomery Rice has been a relentless advocate for diversifying the physician workforce and closing gaps in women’s health research.
Before joining Morehouse in 2011, Montgomery Rice served as dean of the School of Medicine at Meharry Medical College, where she founded the Center for Women’s Health Research, one of the nation’s first research centers dedicated to diseases that disproportionately affect women of color. She holds a degree in chemistry from Georgia Tech and an MD from Harvard Medical School. In a profile by Morehouse School of Medicine, Montgomery Rice said of her career moves: “I thought I could have a greater impact and imprint.”
7. Mary Eliza Mahoney, RN (1845 – 1926)
While not a physician, Mary Eliza Mahoney is a must on any list of African American doctors in history, the first Black professional nurse in the United States. According to PBS, Mahoney was one of just four students among 42 who graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children’s nursing program in 1879.
Throughout her career, Mahoney refused to be relegated to domestic chores assigned to nurses of her time and helped raise the professional status of nursing for women of all races. She was instrumental in founding the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908, and at age 76, she was among the first women in Boston to register to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment.
8. David Satcher, MD, PhD (b. 1941)
David Satcher made history twice over: in 1993, he became the first African American to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in 1998, the 16th U.S. Surgeon General. He simultaneously served as the 10th Assistant Secretary for Health, becoming only the second person ever to hold both posts at once.
In 1970, Satcher became the first African American to earn both an MD and a PhD at Case Western Reserve University. He later served as president of Meharry Medical College from 1982 to 1993 and founded the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine in 2006. According to the AAMC, Satcher’s research found that more than 886,000 African American deaths between 1991 and 2000 could have been prevented if Black patients had received the same care as White patients.
9. Charles Richard Drew, MD (1904 – 1950)
Known as the “father of blood banking,” Charles Richard Drew is one of the most consequential African American doctors in history. He pioneered blood preservation and storage techniques that have saved countless lives. According to the AAMC, his doctoral research at Columbia University led to the establishment of the first large-scale blood banks. During World War II, he directed the Blood for Britain project and the first American Red Cross Blood Bank, where he created mobile donation stations now known as bloodmobiles.
Drew resigned from the Red Cross in protest of the U.S. military’s policy of segregating blood by race, calling the practice unscientific. He later became chief surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital and, in 1943, the first Black surgeon to serve as an examiner for the American Board of Surgery. His mentorship of young African American surgeons shaped generations of Black medical leaders.
10. Alexa Irene Canady, MD (b. 1950)
In 1981, Alexa Irene Canady became the first Black neurosurgeon in the United States. Within just a few years, she had risen to chief of neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, where she became renowned for her patient-centered approach to pediatric neurosurgery, the AAMC reports.
Canady nearly dropped out of college due to a crisis of self-confidence before discovering her passion for medicine. As she told the National Library of Medicine, “By being patient-centered, the practice growth was exponential.” Even after retiring to Florida, she returned to part-time practice to address a shortage of pediatric neurosurgery services in the area.
11. Susan McKinney Steward, MD (1847 – 1918)
Susan McKinney Steward graduated as class valedictorian from the New York Medical College for Women in 1870, becoming the first African American woman physician in New York State and only the third Black female doctor in the country, according to the National Library of Medicine. Born in Brooklyn, she specialized in homeopathic medicine, prenatal care and pediatrics, and ran a successful interracial practice for over 25 years.
Beyond her clinical work, McKinney Steward co-founded the Brooklyn Women’s Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary, advocated tirelessly for women’s suffrage and championed health equity in her community. In 1911, she joined W.E.B. Du Bois at the Universal Race Congress in London, where she presented a paper on “Colored American Women.”
12. Regina Marcia Benjamin, MD, MBA (b. 1956)
In 2009, Regina Marcia Benjamin was sworn in as the 18th U.S. Surgeon General, where she served as the first chair of the National Prevention Council and helped develop the National Prevention Strategy. Long before her appointment as “the nation’s doctor,” Benjamin founded BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, providing clinical care, social services and health education to residents of the small Gulf Coast town.
Benjamin rebuilt the clinic multiple times after disasters, including damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a fire in 2006. According to the National Library of Medicine, she has said she hopes to make a difference in her community “by providing a clinic where patients can come and receive health care with dignity.”
13. William Augustus Hinton, MD (1883 – 1959)
The son of formerly enslaved parents, William Augustus Hinton finished Harvard Medical School in just three years instead of the usual four, graduating in 1912, the AAMC notes. He went on to develop the Hinton test for diagnosing syphilis in 1927, which became the U.S. Public Health Service’s standard procedure because it was easier, less expensive and more accurate than previous methods.
The Bay State Banner notes that Hinton later helped develop the Davies-Hinton test and authored a widely acclaimed book on syphilis, in which he characterized the illness as “a disease of the underprivileged,” a remarkably forward-thinking framing of the social determinants of health. He taught at Harvard for over 25 years and, in 1949, became the first Black professor at Harvard Medical School.
14. Ala Stanford, MD (b. 1970)
Ala Stanford, the first African American woman pediatric surgeon trained entirely in the United States, became one of the defining medical figures of the COVID-19 era. In April 2020, as the pandemic disproportionately devastated Black communities in Philadelphia, Stanford founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, bringing free testing and later vaccinations directly to underserved neighborhoods through churches, mosques and parking lots.
Stanford’s grassroots model gained national recognition for combating racial health disparities in real time. In 2022, President Biden appointed her HHS Regional Director for Region 3, and she joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 2024, the same year she published her memoir, Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude, and a Surgeon’s Fight for Health Justice. As Stanford told NPR, she “saved more lives in a parking lot” during the pandemic than ever before.
15. Marilyn Hughes Gaston, MD (b. 1939)
Marilyn Hughes Gaston became one of the world’s leading researchers on sickle cell disease after a defining experience as an intern in 1964, when she treated a baby with the condition. Her groundbreaking 1986 study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated that prophylactic penicillin could prevent fatal infections in children with sickle cell disease, and led directly to a national newborn screening program for the disease.
In 1990, Gaston became the first Black female physician appointed director of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Primary Health Care. She was also only the second Black woman to serve as assistant surgeon general and to achieve the rank of rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service, the AAMC reports.
16. Louis Wade Sullivan, MD (b. 1933)
Louis Wade Sullivan was the only Black student in his class at Boston University School of Medicine. In 1975, he became the founding dean of what would become Morehouse School of Medicine, the first predominantly Black medical school opened in the United States in the 20th century, the AAMC reports.
From 1989 to 1993, Sullivan served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he directed the creation of the Office of Minority Programs at the National Institutes of Health. He also founded the Sullivan Alliance in 2005 to increase the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in healthcare. Reflecting on the only Black doctor he saw as a child in rural Georgia, Sullivan told Weill Cornell Medicine, “I was in awe of him.”
Who was the first Black person to get a doctorate from Harvard?
While not a medical doctor, W.E.B. Du Bois holds a foundational place in Black academic history. According to Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery initiative, Du Bois was the first Black person to earn a doctorate from Harvard University, completing his PhD in history in 1895. His scholarship, advocacy and co-founding of the NAACP charted a path toward racial uplift that helped open doors for Black scholars across every field, including medicine.
Bottom line
From 19th-century trailblazers to today’s leaders at major medical institutions, the African American doctors in history highlighted here did not just practice medicine; they reshaped it, often in the face of brutal opposition. Their innovations in surgery, public health, blood banking, ophthalmology, oncology and beyond continue to save lives today. Honoring the legacy of these Black medical pioneers means continuing to push for equity in healthcare and supporting the next generation of Black physicians.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Harvard begin admitting Black people?
According to The Harvard Crimson, Harvard College admitted its first Black student, Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847, although he died before he could enroll.
How many Black cardiologists are there in the U.S.?
According to NBC News, a 2021 report by the Association of Black Cardiologists found that Black cardiologists make up only about 3% of the U.S. cardiologist workforce.
Citations
Haskins, Julia. Celebrating 10 African-American medical pioneers. Association of American Medical Colleges. February 25, 2019. https://www.aamc.org/news/celebrating-10-african-american-medical-pioneers
Galewitz, Phil. Eight prominent Black leaders in medicine. Association of American Medical Colleges. February 1, 2024. https://www.aamc.org/news/8-prominent-black-leaders-medicine
African American Medical Pioneers. PBS American Experience. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/partners-african-american-medical-pioneers/
Shen, Megan Johnson, et al. Improved Patient Experience and Outcomes: Is Patient–Provider Concordance the Key? Journal of Patient Experience. May 2022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9158407/
Daniel Hale Williams, M.D. National Library of Medicine, U.S. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/opening-doors/OB21981-sm.html
Gaston, M.H., et al. Prophylaxis with Oral Penicillin in Children with Sickle Cell Anemia. New England Journal of Medicine. June 19, 1986. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198606193142501
Hosein, Anita, et al. William A. Hinton (1883–1959): Diagnosing and Confronting Racism in the Medical Profession. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. 2021. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294275/
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. Jackson State University Global Technology and Engineering Center. https://www.jsums.edu/gtec/dr-daniel-hale-williams/