Rebecca Lee Crumpler
First African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States
At a glance
- Inventor
- Rebecca Lee Crumpler
- Life
- 1831–1895
- Birthplace
- Christiana, Delaware
- Country
- United States
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1800s
- Fields
- Medicine & Health
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
Crumpler graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1864 and practised in Boston and, after the Civil War, in Richmond, Virginia, treating freedpeople through the Freedmen's Bureau.
Historical context
American medical schools admitted almost no women and almost no Black students. Crumpler was both, in the middle of a civil war.
Obstacles
In Richmond she recorded pharmacists refusing to fill her prescriptions and colleagues telling her the 'MD' after her name stood for 'mule driver'.
The legacy
Her 1883 Book of Medical Discourses, drawn from her case notes on the care of women and children, is among the first medical texts published by an African American author.
The evidence
A Book of Medical Discourses (Boston, 1883)
Primary recordNew England Female Medical College records
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.