Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler
Our country’s first African-American woman physician, Rebecca Davis, was born in 1831 and lived with an aunt who cared for ailing neighbors.
Care for poor Blacks was almost non-existent in Delaware, but when she married Wyatt Lee, she moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she became employed as a nurse until she was accepted into the New England Female Medical College in 1860, which was very rare for Black women. She received a degree of “Doctress of Medicine.”
After the Civil War, she moved to Richmond, Virginia, with her second husband, Arthur Crumpler, so her name now became Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler. In Richmond, she served a community of over 30,000 Blacks. She worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide care for freed slaves. Here, she met with racism and misogyny, since doctors and pharmacists snubbed her.
But when she moved back to Boston, to a predominantly African-American community, she was able to continue her practice with renewed enthusiasm.
She died in 1895. The Rebecca Lee Society was named in her honor.