{"id":34261,"date":"2013-10-12T02:31:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T02:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34261"},"modified":"2013-10-12T02:31:52","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T02:31:52","slug":"new-recognition-for-first-black-u-s-doctor-with-medical-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34261","title":{"rendered":"New recognition for first black U.S. doctor with medical degree"},"content":{"rendered":"

New recognition for first black U.S. doctor with medical degree<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

American Medical News<\/a>
\n2010-11-08<\/p>\n

Kevin B. O\u2019Reilly<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. James McCune Smith’s descendants unveiled a new headstone in a ceremony to commemorate his achievements as a physician, essayist and abolitionist.<\/em><\/p>\n

The New York City burial site of the nation’s first black medical degree-holder received a new headstone\u2014one provided by his white descendants in a recent public ceremony.<\/p>\n

Dr. James McCune Smith<\/a> received his medical degree at the University of Glasgow in Scotland in 1837, forced to go overseas for his education due to U.S. colleges’ racist admissions policies. Historians say the training provided at European medical schools at that time was, ironically, superior to that offered in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Greta Blau, Dr. Smith’s great-great-great-granddaughter, learned that she was descended from the doctor after finding his name inscribed in a family Bible. She recognized the name from a history paper she had written years earlier in college<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After confirming the family connection through genealogical research, Blau learned that Dr. Smith’s five surviving children passed, lived and identified as white<\/a> in society after he died in 1865.<\/p>\n

Dr. Smith treated both black and white patients in New York City. He was the first black doctor to write a medical case report\u2014presented to the New York Medical and Surgical Society in 1840.<\/p>\n

He also was the first black physician to have a medical scientific paper published, in the New York Journal of Medicine<\/em> in 1844, and was a prominent essayist who attacked slavery and racial theories positing blacks’ inferiority. He was a friend of Frederick Douglass<\/a> and wrote the introduction to his 1855 autobiography…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New recognition for first black U.S. doctor with medical degree American Medical News 2010-11-08 Kevin B. O\u2019Reilly Dr. James McCune Smith’s descendants unveiled a new headstone in a ceremony to commemorate his achievements as a physician, essayist and abolitionist. The New York City burial site of the nation’s first black medical degree-holder received a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,2039,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[16097,16081,13304,16098,596],"class_list":["post-34261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-american-medical-news","tag-greta-blau","tag-james-mccune-smith","tag-kevin-b-oreilly","tag-new-york-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}