Meharry Medical College is a private historically black medical school affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College, it was the first medical school for African Americans in the South. This region had the highest proportion of this ethnicity, but they were excluded from many public and private segregated institutions of higher education, particularly after the end of Reconstruction.
Audrey Forbes Manley is an American pediatrician and public health administrator. Manley was the first African-American woman appointed as chief resident at Cook County Children's Hospital in Chicago (1962). Manley was the first to achieve the rank of Assistant Surgeon General in 1988 and later served as the eighth president of Spelman College.
Dorothy Lavinia Brown, also known as "Dr. D.", was an African-American surgeon, legislator, and teacher. She was the first female surgeon of African-American ancestry from the Southeastern United States. She was also the first African American female to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly as she was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives. While serving in the House of Representatives, Brown fought for women's rights and for the rights of people of color.
Consuelo H. Wilkins is an American physician, biomedical researcher, and health equity expert. She is Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is a professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and has a joint appointment at Meharry Medical College. She additionally serves as one of the principal investigators of the Vanderbilt Clinical and Translational Science Award, Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core (CTSA) and as vice president for Health Equity at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Anna Cherrie Epps was an American microbiologist known for her immunology research as well as her efforts to promote the advancement of minorities within the sciences, specifically medicine.
Eve Christine Gadzikwanée Mandaza is a Zimbabwean businesswoman, leader, mentor, philanthropist, and an author. She is currently the Director General and Secretary to the Standards Association of Zimbabwe and the 13th President of AU standards body, the African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO). Dr Gadzikwa is the past board chairperson of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and past Chairperson of The Institute of Directors (IoD) Zimbabwe.
Grace Marilyn James was an American pediatrician in Louisville, Kentucky. When she began practicing medicine in 1953, the hospitals in Louisville were racially segregated by law. At the University of Louisville School of Medicine she was the first African-American physician on the faculty. She was also one of the first two African-American women on the faculty at any southern medical school. Additionally, she was first African-American woman to serve as an attending physician at Louisville's Kosair Children's Hospital.
Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O. is an American physician, academic, and the first African-American woman to serve as dean of a U.S. medical school; she is also known as the sister of Diana Ross along with being the aunt of actress Tracee Ellis Ross, and singer-songwriters Rhonda Ross Kendrick and Evan Ross. She majored in biology and chemistry at Wayne State University, graduating in 1965. Then, in 1969, she entered Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine. Ross-Lee then went on to open her own private family practice, teach as a professor, and hold other positions within the medical community. In 1993, she was elected as the first woman dean of a medical school, at Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. She has earned several awards and honors for her work and accomplishments.
Natalia Tanner was an American physician. She was the first female African-American fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She is known for her activism promoting women and people of color in medicine and fighting health inequality in the United States.
Frank S. Royal is an American physician, company director and civic leader. He is the former chairman and president of the National Medical Association, an African-American medical organization.
Oluwatoyin (Toyin) Asojo currently Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives at Dartmouth Cancer Center was formerly Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Hampton University. She was formerly an Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. She works at "the interface of math, chemistry, biology, computation." She is a crystallographer and interested in structural studies of proteins from neglected tropical disease pathogens.
Valerie Montgomery Rice is an American obstetrician, gynecologist, and college administrator. She is the president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine.
Dr. Veronica Thierry Mallett, M.D., MMM, is a women's health physician in the United States known for her work in urogynecology, specifically with respect to genital organ prolapse and urinary incontinence, and for her efforts in reducing health disparities.
Clive O. Callender is an American surgeon and professor of surgery at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Trained in organ transplantation, he founded the Howard University Hospital Transplant Center in 1974. To increase the frequency of organ donation among African Americans he founded the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP) in 1991. During the 2019/20 academic year he continued his academic work as Professor of Surgery at Howard University College of Medicine.
Dr. Dolores C. Shockley was the first black woman to receive a PhD in pharmacology in the United States and one of the first African American students to receive a PhD from Purdue University. After obtaining her PhD she became faculty at the historically black school Meharry Medical College where she subsequently became the first black woman to chair a Pharmacology department in the United States in 1988. Her research contributions included studying the effects of chemical pollutants on the brain and identifying pharmacological agents that interact with drugs of abuse such as cocaine. She was a distinguished scholar and emeritus professor at Meharry Medical College.
James Earl King Hildreth is an American immunologist and academic administrator. Hildreth is the 12th president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College. He is known for his work on HIV/AIDS and was the first African American to hold a full tenured professorship in basic research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Edward D. Miller calls Hildreth "one of the most influential HIV researchers in the world".
Donna P. Davis is an American physician who became the first African-American woman to enter the United States Navy as a medical doctor in 1975.
Ursula Joyce Yerwood was the first female African American physician in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and founder of the Yerwood Center, the first community center for African Americans in Stamford, Connecticut.
Merry L. Lindsey is an American cardiac physiologist. She is the Stokes-Shackleford Professor and Chair of the University of Nebraska Medical Center Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology and the director of the Center for Heart and Vascular Research. In 2021, Lindsey was appointed editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Physiology. Heart and Circulatory Physiology.
