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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey I'm Eves, and you're listening to This

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Speaker 1: Day in History Class, a podcast that proves history is

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Speaker 1: always happening. Today is February. The day was February eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty four. Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman

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Speaker 1: in the US to earn an m d or Doctor

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Speaker 1: of Medicine. Crumpler was born in eighteen thirty one in

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Speaker 1: Delaware to free black parents Absalom Davis and Matilda Webber Davis.

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Speaker 1: She grew up in Pennsylvania, where her aunt raised her.

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Speaker 1: Her unspent a lot of time caring for people with illnesses,

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Speaker 1: which may have influenced Rebecca's desire to go into medicine.

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Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty two, Rebecca moved to Charlestown in Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: where she worked as a nurse. There weren't any formal

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Speaker 1: schools for nursing in the US at the time, so

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Speaker 1: she studied on her own. She assisted local physicians and

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Speaker 1: cared for patients when doctors were absent. By this time,

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell had already become the first woman in the

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Speaker 1: US to get an m d from a medical school,

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Speaker 1: and Crumpler knew about the New England Female Medical College,

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Speaker 1: which was founded in eighteen forty eight in Boston. The

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Speaker 1: school was the first in the US to train women

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Speaker 1: in medicine. Rebecca asked the physicians she worked forward to

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Speaker 1: write letters of recommendation for her application to the college.

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Speaker 1: She was admitted to the school and began her studies

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Speaker 1: there in eighteen sixty At this time, around three hundred

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Speaker 1: women had medical degrees in the US out of more

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Speaker 1: than fifty thousand physicians in the country. Medical degrees were

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Speaker 1: largely unnecessary to become a physician since most states had

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Speaker 1: no licensing requirements, so hundreds of women got degrees after

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell, none of them were black It's likely that

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Speaker 1: Crumpler went to medical school to get better at nursing

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Speaker 1: rather than to become a physician. Little is known about

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Speaker 1: the challenges that she faced to get into the school

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Speaker 1: and what she went through while enrolled for years. Scholars

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Speaker 1: gave the title a first woman to get an mp

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Speaker 1: D to Rebecca Cole. She got her degree from the

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Speaker 1: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in eighteen sixty seven. There's

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Speaker 1: a good chance that Crumpler herself was unaware of her

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Speaker 1: status as the first black woman to get an m

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Speaker 1: d in the States, But on February eighteen sixty four,

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Speaker 1: she and two of her classmates, Mary Lockwood Allen and

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Kimball, took their final oral exams. The faculty voted

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Speaker 1: to recommend the three of them to the Board of Trustees,

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Speaker 1: even though they stated that Crumpler had quote deficiencies, and

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Speaker 1: they hesitated to recommend her. On March one, Crumpler got

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Speaker 1: her Doctress of Medicine degree. Around the time that she graduated,

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Speaker 1: she married a man named Arthur Crumpler. She practiced in

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Speaker 1: Boston for a short time and then pursued additional training

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Speaker 1: at an unknown place. At the end of the Civil War,

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Speaker 1: she moved to Richmond, Virginia, a place that she considered

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Speaker 1: a quote proper field for real missionary work and one

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Speaker 1: that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the

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Speaker 1: diseases of women and children. She worked with the Freedman's

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Speaker 1: Bureau to care for formally enslaved and other black people.

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Speaker 1: Black physicians experienced a lot of racism in the post

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Speaker 1: war South, and there's evidence that Crumpler herself was at

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Speaker 1: the receiving end of that hate. Howard University College of Medicine,

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Speaker 1: the first historically black medical school, was founded in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight. By eighteen sixty nine, Crumpler had gone back

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Speaker 1: to Boston. Around a decade later, she and her husband

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Speaker 1: had moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts. She was no longer

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Speaker 1: in active medical practice by this time, but in three

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Speaker 1: she published the Text, a book of medical discourses. The

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Speaker 1: New England Female Medical College did not graduate another black

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Speaker 1: woman before it closed in eighteen seventy three. I'm Eve

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Speaker 1: Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little more about

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Speaker 1: history today than you did yesterday. If you're hungry for

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Speaker 1: more history, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and

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