Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Rebecca Lee Crumpler was an American physician who in 1864 became the first African American woman to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree in the United States, graduating from the New England Female Medical College. She practiced first in Boston among poor Black women and children, then moved to Richmond, Virginia after the Civil War to provide medical care to newly freed people through the Freedmen's Bureau, often facing open hostility from white physicians who refused to fill her prescriptions. In 1883 she published A Book of Medical Discourses, one of the earliest medical texts written by an African American author, addressing childhood illness and women's health for an audience of mothers and nurses.