Black History Delaware > Rebecca Crumpler
Reposted from http://www.blackpast.org/
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler: First Black Female Doctor
Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was born free around 1831 to Absolum and Matilda Davis in Delaware. She was raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania who is noted to have provided health care to her neighbors. In 1852 Davis was living in Charlestown, Massachusetts where she worked as a nurse for eight years. She enrolled in the New England Female Medical College in 1860. Her acceptance at the college was highly unusual as most medical schools at that time it did not admit African Americans. Despite its reluctance, the faculty awarded Davis her medical doctorate.
That year she also married Arthur Crumpler. Dr. Crumpler practiced medicine in Boston and specialized in the care of women, children, and the poor. She moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1865 to minister to freedpeople through the Freedmen’s Bureau. Crumpler returned to Boston in 1869 where she practiced from her home on Beacon Hill and dispensed nutritional advice to poor women and children. In 1883 she published a medical guide book, Book of Medical Discourses, which primarily gave advice for women in the health care of their families.
Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died in 1895 in Fairview, Massachusetts. Though her story was long forgotten, today she is honored for her groundbreaking achievements. In 1989 Saundra Maass-Robinson, M.D. and Patricia Whitley, M.D. founded the Rebecca Lee Society, an organization which supports and promotes black women physicians.