What a country

 

For Black History Month, I was asked to research the first black woman Ob/Gyn in the US and to talk about her at this morning’s service. Little did I realize what I would find. 

I found her, at least the first one to have board certification. I gave this presentation (here edited down a bit) at this morning’s service.

She was Helen Octavia Dickens.

Born in Dayton, OH in 1909, her father had been enslaved as a child, was liberated and raised as a son by a Union officer. He studied law but worked as a custodian, due to Northern prejudice. Her Mom worked as a domestic.

Her parents insisted that Helen receive a good education. She attended an integrated high school, then the University of Illinois.

Helen was the first black woman student at the University of Illinois School of Medicine, graduating in 1934. After an internship in Chicago, she moved to Philadelphia, practicing in difficult circumstances in a poor neighborhood. One night she came to attend a laboring woman only to find that there was no electricity. She moved the woman’s bed to the window to conduct the delivery by streetlight. Such experiences led Dr Dickens to place four birthing beds into a row house, creating a small childbirth center.

Faithful to her mission and un-intimidated by predominantly white institutions, she pursued an advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Medicine.

In 1943, she married Purvis Henderson, also a Penn resident. They moved to New York where Helen studied gynecologic surgery at Harlem Hospital. In 1945 she received her Master of Science from Penn. In 1946 she completed her surgical training and was the first black physician certified by the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In 1950, she became the first black woman member of the American College of Surgeons.

Returning to Penn, she rose through the ranks from instructor to full professor. When Pap smears and mammography became known, she opened cancer detection programs in poor areas of Philadelphia. She taught also at Medical College of Pennsylvania and at other Philadelphia hospitals.

In 1967 Dr Dickens founded Penn’s “Teen Clinic”, providing contraception, counseling and prenatal care to adolescent women. In 1969, she became dean of minority admissions at Penn; in five years the number of black medical students at Penn grew from three to 64.

She retired as professor emeritus in 1985, receiving many awards, including the AMA’s Medical Woman of the Year.

While I was in training at Penn I worked at the Teen Clinic from 1987-88, just missing the chance to learn from this legendary physician. I met Dr Dickens at our graduation in 1989.

In 1999, Penn rebuilt the Teen Clinic, naming it The Helen O. Dickens Center for Women’s Health, honoring her fifty years “dedicated to healing, helping, and guiding.” Helen’s legacy provides care to women of all ages without regard for their ability to pay.

Helen died in 2001, aged 92. Her daughter Dr. Jayne Henderson Brown followed in Helen’s footsteps and practices medicine in Philadelphia.

In Helen Dickens’ story we see the “arc of the moral universe bending toward justice” as God’s love passes through the generations. Helen’s father was born into slavery in 1855, but the kindness of a Union soldier led to that lad’s daughter becoming a pioneering physician, providing specialty care to under-served women. When I shook her hand in 1989, Dr Dickens was an emeritus professor at one of our finest medical schools.

It is a privilege to live in a country that has such women in it.

Thank you, Dr Dickens.

Can you believe this? 

A family goes from enslavement to Emeritus Professor at an Ivy League medical school in ONE GENERATION. And I worked in her clinic, without knowing her story, and I met her. I talked to a woman whose father was a slave and who herself had to fight prejudice, but who rose to the highest echelons of academia. And I didn’t know her astonishing history until doing my research last week.

Don’t tell me that this is a racist nation.

And be aware that there are heroes all among us, every day, in every state. We may not see them, but they are there.

By the way, our congregation loved the presentation. There is a very broad conservative streak in middle class Black culture. We dishonor American blacks by ignoring it.

 

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 45 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Re:30 & 29

    By the way, is the book about the Nat Turner Rebellion: This Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood, by Patrick H. Breen, a good book? Would you recommend another one?

     

    • #31
  2. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Ansonia (View Comment):

    I’m especially interested in books that would tell me more about women and free blacks losing legal ground in the half century before the Civil War. Also interested in finding out how I find out when different states, especially Virginia, made it against the law to teach a slave to read. Did news of the revolution in Haiti have anything to do with it ? (is what I’m wondering).

    Haiti, the rise of northern abolitionists (it’s why abolitionist literature was banned in much of the south), and, as Arahant points out, Turner’s Rebellion all contributed to stricter laws governing the education and movement of slaves. 

    • #32
  3. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Ansonia (View Comment):

    I’m especially interested in books that would tell me more about women and free blacks losing legal ground in the half century before the Civil War. Also interested in finding out how I find out when different states, especially Virginia, made it against the law to teach a slave to read. Did news of the revolution in Haiti have anything to do with it ? (is what I’m wondering).

    I’m afraid I can’t cite a particular book. But the topic has been mentioned several times over the years in the book review section of American Historical Review. I may have noted those reviews in the margins — I tend to mark up the reviews as I read them — but unless it’s a book I’m putting on my potential reading list, I don’t make further notes of them. And it would be too much work to page through all the issues looking for my marginal notes (although sometimes I pencil in an index to my marginal notes on the cover page).  

    As to the revolution in Haiti having an effect on slave laws, the answer is a definite yes. But whether that also had an effect on the status of free blacks is, I think, a more difficult question.    

    • #33
  4. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Re: 32 & 33

    O.K. , so some changes in the laws governing the education and movement of slaves in the U.S.—changes in the direction of increased constraint—occurred after news reached the U.S. of the revolution in what we now know of as Haiti and before Nat Turner’s rebellion ?

    Were there changes,  in the direction of more constraint, made to the laws governing the education and movement of free blacks around the same time, between, say, 1791 and 1831 ?

    I just found out, after Nat Turner’s August 1831 rebellion, severe changes were made in Virginia and elsewhere to such laws governing enslaved blacks and their slaveholders. I wonder if, after Nat Turner’s rebellion— and, if so, how soon after?—we see changes to laws governing education and movement of free blacks.

    Thanks, Reticulator, for mentioning the American Historical Review. It sounds like something I’d find interesting.

    I agree that no change in the laws around the same time laws for slaves were changed wouldn’t necessarily mean there was no effect on the status of free blacks.

    • #34
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Ansonia (View Comment):

    Re: 32 & 33

    O.K. , so some changes in the laws governing the education and movement of slaves in the U.S.—changes in the direction of increased constraint—occurred after news reached the U.S. of the revolution in what we now know of as Haiti and before Nat Turner’s rebellion ?

    Were there changes, in the direction of more constraint, made to the laws governing the education and movement of free blacks around the same time, between, say, 1791 and 1831 ?

    I just found out, after Nat Turner’s August 1831 rebellion, severe changes were made in Virginia and elsewhere to such laws governing enslaved blacks and their slaveholders. I wonder if, after Nat Turner’s rebellion— and, if so, how soon after?—we see changes to laws governing education and movement of free blacks.

    Thanks, Reticulator, for mentioning the American Historical Review. It sounds like something I’d find interesting.

    I agree that no change in the laws around the same time laws for slaves were changed wouldn’t necessarily mean there was no effect on the status of free blacks.

    Really sounds like you should create your own conversation and ask some of Ricochet’s legal and historical types.

    • #35
  6. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    Thanks, Reticulator, for mentioning the American Historical Review. It sounds like something I’d find interesting.

    It’s the journal of the American Historical Society, which is becoming more and more an activist group rather than an association of scholarly history professionals. You can see the downward trend in the reviews over the years. But it still has some good reviews. I belong to it mostly so I can read the reviews, and I ignore the stuff having to do with the professional meetings and “activism.”  

    • #36
  7. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Re: #36

    Just looked online. That’s how it seems to me. As you do, I would find the reviews interesting.

    Re:# 35

    After reading Christopher Hitchens’ biography of Thomas Jefferson (I just finished binge reading it a few hours ago today.) I’m definitely interested in picking the brains of Ricochet’s historical types, especially about changes in who was allowed to vote, and about changes and possible changes in the way free blacks, slaves and whites interacted with each other between 1776 and 1860. Hitchens’ book has me convinced Jefferson was deeply afraid of slave rebellions (Jefferson definitely didn’t want any Virginia planter blood watering that Tree of Liberty; the revolution in what we now know of as Haiti really got to him.) and firmly believed, by the end of his life, that freeing the slaves, without a solid plan of action for deporting all of them, would be dangerous to whites.

    I never heard a word about Nat Turner in high school history class. Vaguely remember hearing something about William Styron’s novel about him.

    • #37
  8. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    I never heard a word about Nat Turner in high school history class.

    When did you go to school? I surely remember it from back when I went (when dinosaur roamed the Earth, etc.).

    • #38
  9. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Re # 38

    1974, Woodbridge Connecticut. (My family moved there from Ansonia.) I’m sure I heard about Styron’s novel around that time or before. I just don’t think Nat Turner was discussed in History class. Of course we discussed John Brown.

    • #39
  10. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Ansonia (View Comment):

    Re: #36

    Just looked online. That’s how it seems to me. As you do, I would find the reviews interesting.

    Re:# 35

    After reading Christopher Hitchens’ biography of Thomas Jefferson (I just finished binge reading it a few hours ago today.) I’m definitely interested in picking the brains of Ricochet’s historical types, especially about changes in who was allowed to vote, and about changes and possible changes in the way free blacks, slaves and whites interacted with each other between 1776 and 1860. Hitchens’ book has me convinced Jefferson was deeply afraid of slave rebellions (Jefferson definitely didn’t want any Virginia planter blood watering that Tree of Liberty; the revolution in what we now know of as Haiti really got to him.) and firmly believed, by the end of his life, that freeing the slaves, without a solid plan of action for deporting all of them, would be dangerous to whites.

    I never heard a word about Nat Turner in high school history class. Vaguely remember hearing something about William Styron’s novel about him.

    This reminds me that a good account of the ever stricter legal structure around slavery in Virginia before the Civil War can be found in Annette Gordon-Reed’s, The Hemmingses of Monticello.

    You can also find some very good material on changes in laws regarding slave and freed blacks prior to the Civil War in Robert Cottrol’s The Long, Lingering Shadow (particularly pages 80-109, and the footnotes contain references to other materials).  Cottrol’s book is outstanding; a comparative study on slavery and race in nine countries of the Western Hemisphere.  Lots of fascinating and insightful material.

    • #40
  11. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Ansonia (View Comment):

    Re # 38

    1974, Woodbridge Connecticut. I’m sure I heard about Styron’s novel around that time or before. I just don’t think Nat Turner was discussed in History class. Of course we discussed John Brown.

    Another reference source which contains a lot of material on laws and attitudes regarding freed blacks in the Northern states is Gene Dattel’s, Reckoning With Race: America’s Failure.

    • #41
  12. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Gumby Mark, thank you so much !

    • #42
  13. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    You can also find some very good material on changes in laws regarding slave and freed blacks prior to the Civil War in Robert Cottrol’s The Long, Lingering Shadow (particularly pages 80-109, and the footnotes contain references to other materials). Cottrol’s book is outstanding; a comparative study on slavery and race in nine countries of the Western Hemisphere. Lots of fascinating and insightful material.

    That sounds like a very good place to start.

    For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to find an AHR review of that book. But other reviews make it sound like a good one.  

    • #43
  14. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    You can also find some very good material on changes in laws regarding slave and freed blacks prior to the Civil War in Robert Cottrol’s The Long, Lingering Shadow (particularly pages 80-109, and the footnotes contain references to other materials). Cottrol’s book is outstanding; a comparative study on slavery and race in nine countries of the Western Hemisphere. Lots of fascinating and insightful material.

    That sounds like a very good place to start.

    For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to find an AHR review of that book. But other reviews make it sound like a good one.

    I learned about it when Paul Rahe mentioned it on Ricochet.  He knows and respects Cottrol, though he had not yet read this book which had just been released.

    • #44
  15. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    “He ( Dr. Rahe) knows and respects Cottrol.”

    Those were the magic words with me. I just got it on kindle. I’ll get the others at the library.

    It’s been too long since we’ve had a post from Dr. Rahe.

    • #45
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.