Daniel Hale Williams

Daniel Hale Williams was an African American surgeon who in 1893 performed one of the first successful operations to repair the pericardium, the membrane surrounding the heart, at a time when opening the chest to operate on the heart was considered extremely dangerous. In 1891 he had founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, one of the first hospitals in the United States to have a racially integrated staff and to train Black physicians and nurses at a time when most institutions refused to admit them. In 1913 he became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons, and throughout his career he worked to build institutions and training pathways that racial discrimination had otherwise closed off.