Dorothy Lavina Brown (also known as Dr. D) is well known for being the first black, female surgeon from the Southeastern United States (Wikipedia, 2022). From the year 1948 to 1949, Dr. D was appointed to general surgery residency in a racially segregated part of the South (Bourlin, 2021). In 1956, Dr. D was able to land herself a position on the state legislature in Texas, as the first black woman representative. Dr. D is the epitome of the phrase “0 to 100”.
Dr. D was born on January 7th, 1919 (Changing the Face of Medicine, 2015) in Philadelphia. She grew up in an orphanage called the Troy Orphan Asylum (later renamed to Vanderhyden Hall) (Bourlin, 2021) from age five months to thirteen years (Changing the Face of Medicine, 2015). At age thirteen, Ms. Brown’s mother managed to reclaim her from the orphanage. Living with her mother was tremendously difficult and Ms. Brown ended up attempting to run away back to the orphanage on five separate occasions. At the age of 15, Ms. Brown enrolled herself into Troy High School, managing to graduate at the top of her class in 1937 (Bourlin, 2021). She eventually graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, in the year 1948. Dr. D completed a five-year residency at Meharry’s George Hubbard Hospital in 1949, resulting in her successfully securing a position as Professor of Surgery in 1955. The year after that (1956), Dr. D became the first single, adoptive mother in Tennessee (Changing the Face of Medicine, 2015) after she adopted a young, unmarried patient’s child (Bourlin, 2021). These small, yet very remarkable accomplishments helped to equalize the idea of both genders, providing proof that women were intellectually and financially equal to men.
- Mitiouchkina, T., Mishin, A.S., Somermeyer, L.G. et al. Plants with genetically encoded autoluminescence. Nat Biotechnol 38, 944–946 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0500-9
- Bourlin, contributed by: Olga. “Dorothy Lavinia Brown (1919-2004) •.” BLACKPAST, Blackpast.org, 4 Jan. 2021, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/brown-dorothy-lavinia-1919-2004/.
- “Dorothy Lavinia Brown.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Lavinia_Brown.
- “Changing the Face of Medicine | Dorothy Lavinia Brown.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 3 June 2015, https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_46.html.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 