African Americans in Sciences and Professional Fields
African American History
African Americans in Sciences and Professional Fields
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1783 |
Former slave James Derham buys his freedom from his physician slave owner, who trains him as a physician; Derham goes on to open his own medical practice in New Orleans | |
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1822 |
James Hall becomes the first known African American to graduate from an American college of medicine (Medical College of Maine) | |
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1843 |
Macon B. Allen becomes the first African American to practice law; in 1845, he passes the Massachusetts bar exam and is formally admitted to the bar | |
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1846 |
Businessman William Leidesdorff opens the first hotel in San Francisco and goes on to become the first African American self-made millionaire |
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1854 |
John V. De Grasse becomes the first African American admitted to a medical professional organization (the Massachusetts Medical Society) | |
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1864 |
Rebecca Lee Crumpler graduates from New England Female Medical College and becomes the first African American woman physician; others to follow include Rebecca Cole (Women’s Medical College, Pennsylvania, 1867) and Susan McKinney (New York Medical College, 1870) | |
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1865 |
John S. Rock is certified by the U.S. Supreme Court and becomes the first African American to be admitted to practice law before the Court | |
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1867 |
Robert Tanner Freeman becomes the first African American to graduate from an American school of dentistry (Harvard University) | |
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1870 |
Jonathan Jasper Wright becomes the first African American judge at the state supreme court level when the South Carolina General Assembly elects him to the South Carolina Supreme Court | |
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1872 |
Macon B. Allen becomes the first African American judge at the municipal level | |
| Charlotte Ray graduates from Howard University Law School and becomes the first female African American lawyer | ||
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1879 |
Lewis Latimer invents the electric filament bulb; goes on to invent the carbon filament for electric lamps (1882) and publish a work on electric lighting systems (1890) |
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1890 |
Ida Gray Nelson Rollins graduates from the University of Michigan Dental School and becomes the first black woman to earn a dental degree in the United States | |
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1893 |
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs the first successful human open-heart surgery, at Chicago’s Provident Hospital | |
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1906 |
Madame C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove) opens a black hair-care business in Detroit and goes on to become the first female African American millionaire |
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1914 |
Plant scientist George Washington Carver revolutionizes Southern agriculture by publishing his research on peanuts and sweet potatoes, saving cotton farmers whose crops had failed because of pests and exhausted soil; later, Carver speaks before the U.S. Congress (1921) and serves in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1935) |
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1915 |
Marine biologist E.E. Just becomes the first recipient of the NAACP’s annual Springarn Medal, which recognizes achievements by African Americans |
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1937 |
William H. Hastie becomes the first African American federal judge when he is confirmed to the Federal dDistrict Court of the Virgin Islands; in 1949, under President Truman, Hastie becomes the first African American on the U.S. Court of Appeals |
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1939 |
Jane Matilda Bolin becomes the first female African American judge when New York City Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia appoints her to the city court of domestic relations | |
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1940 |
Dr. Charles Drew develops a method of processing and storing plasma that becomes crucial in conducting blood transfusions |
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1966 |
Constance Baker Motley becomes the first African American woman to be named to the federal bench when she is confirmed as U.S. district judge in southern New York | |
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1967 |
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court when the Senate confirms him after President Johnson’s nomination | |
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1978 |
Guion S. Bluford Jr., Frederick D. Gregory, and Ronald McNair are the first blacks admitted to the NASA astronaut training program; Bluford serves as a mission specialist in the space shuttle program; McNair later loses his life serving as physicist on the ill-fated Challenger mission in 1986 | |
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1986 |
Oprah Winfrey becomes the first black woman to host a nationally syndicated television talk show; she goes on to establish HARPO Productions in 1989, becoming the first black woman to own a television production company and one of the wealthiest women in the world | |
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1987 |
Mae Jemison joins NASA, becoming the first black woman to go into space; she serves as mission specialist on the space shuttle Discovery in 1991 and the space shuttle Endeavor in 1992 |
