[Eoscstudents] Black History

[Levenia Carey]

Good Afternoon:

Today we will spotlight two African-Americans (one who performed the 
first open heart surgery and the other is noted to be the first 
African-American millionaire) they are:


  Daniel Hale Williams

Williams, Daniel Hale, 1858-1931, American surgeon. Daniel Hale Williams 
was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania on January 18,1858. He graduated 
from Chicago Medical College in 1883. Daniel Hales Williams and Alice 
Johnson were wed on April 2, 1898. He died on August 4, 1931, in 
Idlewild, Michigan.  As surgeon of the South Side Dispensary in Chicago 
(1884-91), he became keenly aware of the lack of facilities for training 
African Americans like himself as doctors and nurses. As a result he 
organized the Provident Hospital, the first black hospital in the United 
States. An African American Doctor Daniel Hale Williams is credited with 
having performed open heart surgery on July 9, 1893 before such 
surgeries were established.  The Famous Operation: Daniel Hale Williams 
successfully operated on James Cornish, the victim of a knifing. The 
operation was considered at the time a ground-breaking. The doctor 
opened the patient's chest revealing a beating heart to stitch a small 
wound in the pericardium, the sac surrounding the heart. Williams 
performed the first successful closure of a wound of the heart and 
pericardium. Daniel Hale Williams utilized many of the 
emerging antiseptic sterilization procedures of the day and thereby 
gained a reputation for professionalism. The doctor began his medical 
practice in Chicago at a time when there were only three other black 
physicians.  In the same year President Cleveland appointed him surgeon 
in chief of Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, D.C., and during his 
five-year tenure there he reorganized the hospital.   In 1891, in 
Chicago, Daniel Hale Williams founded Provident, the first American 
interracial hospital. Provident hosted the first nursing school for 
blacks in America.   In 1913, Daniel Hale Williams Williams was the only 
African American member of the American College of Surgeons.  From 1899 
until his death he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical 
College, Nashville, Tenn.

Sarah Breedlove Walker

(Madame C. J. Walker)
businesswoman, philanthropist
Born: 12/23/1867
Birthplace: Delta, La.

After a series of bereavements that left her orphaned at 6 and widowed 
at 20, she and her daughter A'Lelia moved to St. Louis to start over. 
She worked days as a washerwoman and went to night school before 
inventing (1905) a process for straightening the hair of 
African-Americans. Her process, combining her unique formula with 
brushes and heated combs, caught on, and with the money from her 
successful business she and her daughter moved to Denver. She married 
Charles J. Walker, and began promoting her product and process under the 
name of Madame C. J. Walker. She opened a permanent office in Pittsburgh 
in 1908, which her daughter ran, and in 1910 she formed Madame C. J. 
Walker Laboratories in Indianapolis, where she developed products and 
trained her beauticians, known as "Walker Agents." The agents and the 
products were recognized in black communities throughout the U.S. and 
Caribbean for promoting the philosophy that cleanliness and loveliness 
could advance the plight of African-Americans. At her death, the 
multi-million dollar estate was left to various philanthropic 
organizations and to her daughter, whose philanthropic endeavors were 
key to funding the Harlem Renaissance.

Died: 5/25/1919

Making a difference ........ Have a great weekend and keep reading.

Levenia, Marilynn, Brenton, NAACP/Psycho Clubs


 

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