A Pictorial Review of One-Tenth of a Nation -Presenting the Negro Contribution to American Life Today
Published 1957

These are not all of the Black People who forged paths through racism to become change agents in the American Medical Field.

“[Annie Daugherty] was the midwife of the entire town. She delivered most of all the children in [Black Mountain] for the people who couldn’t afford to go to the hospital or have a doctor no matter if they were black or white. That was my grandmother,” Katherine Daugherty Debrow told a local filmmaker in 2001.

Photograph credit: Columbia University Archives,

On 05/25/2012, a DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy was released.

On 05/25/2012, a DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy was released.

Only in the last fifty years has access to Asheville’s hospitals been available to every citizen. Before the 1950s a third of the population was legally segregated from seeking medical treatment.

Photo and narrative source: Tuffs collection at the Wayne County Public Library

As with others, we, THE G. C. AND FRANCES HAWLEY MUSEUM® want to highlight the work they did within intentionally segregated Black communities, such as serving free breakfast to children and setting up more than a dozen medical clinics nationwide. The BPP's public health work also demonstrates the long history of problems activists are still trying to solve today.

ca. March, 1922

Asheville, NC., in 1925 included, from left, Flossie Metz, Lula Long and Kathleen Wills.
Source: Special Collections, Ramsey Library, UNC Asheville.

Carl V. Reynolds, standing fourth from left, served two intermittent terms as Asheville’s chief public health officer between 1903 and 1923. He mounted one of the state’s most successful local responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic and was elected in 1924 to head the N.C. Medical Society.

Carolyn Robertson Payton was born May 13, 1925. She was an African American Psychologist and global peace administrator and advocate. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia to Leroy Solomon Robertson and Bertha Flanagan Robertson.

Biography of Carrie Early Broadfoot - Founder, North Carolina Association of Negro Registered Nurses. Born June 13, 1870 in Lynchburg, VA, died January 8, 1945

When Charlie Kennedy was a kid, his hopes for a medical career seemed an impossible dream.

But with the help of benevolent strangers along the way, scholarships and a fervent determination for greatness, Kennedy would become the first black resident at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and, later, the first black pediatrician in Winston-Salem.

One of the first African Americans to become a registered nurse in the United States.
Image courtesy of the Climbers Club.

Dr. Chester Middlebrook Pierce (B. March 4, 1927 – D. September 23, 2016) was an American psychiatrist who was a tenured professor of education and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Source: LOC.

Descendants of Tuskegee Syphilis Study Survivors Say It Was Nothing Like the Covid-19 Vaccine
They want to set the record straight on their fathers’ legacies and the ahistorical information. Though this article/interview is aboutThe Tuskegee Syphilis Study, we feel it's relevant to NC Black Health care history. American systemic racism structures have created injustices for Black Americans no matter which state we are from or live in now.

Top photo: chief nurse, Lieutenant Della Raney,
Bottom photo: The 17 nurses who were under the charge of chief nurse, Lieutenant Della Raney, were in the 1942 yearbook of Tuskegee Army Flying School. They were part of the station hospital’s medical department for the Alabama base used for the advanced training of black men learning to fly military planes.

Dental Clinic, children pose on steps of Durham County Courthouse, Durham, September 6, 1919.

This school was funded by George Eastman creator of Kodak, who believed in the work the Booker T. Washington and Rosenwald were doing. Caption on reverse states that George Eastman took the photograph.

From Wilson, NC,
Dinah Scarborough Darden and her elder sons, pharmacist James B., lawyer Charles S., and physician John W. Darden.

Photograph of doctors attending a conference held by the Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations

was born in 1880 in Waxhaw, Union County, NC. She was a midwife and a healer who carried deep knowledge passed down through generations. She knew how to walk into the woods and identify the plants and herbs needed to heal the sick, ease pain, and bring new life safely into the world.

Left photograph: A younger Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore. Source: North Carolina Central University, University Archives, James E. Shepard Memorial Library
Right photograph: Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, From John Merrick. A Biographical Sketch by R. McCants Andrews Durham, N.C.- Press of the Seeman Printery, 1920.

Dr. Austin Maurice Curtis, Sr. was born either in June or January 15, 1868 in Raleigh, NC. He was a prominent turn-of-the-century physician and protégé of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Was a dentist for 46 years, a graduate of Johnson C. Smith University, and he received degrees from the from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. He also received degree from the American Training School, the Institute of Applied Science and the American School of Law, specializing in crime detection and law.

Dr. Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, DC. Drew was a famous physician, surgeon, racial justice activist, and medical researcher who excelled in the area of blood transfusions. Dr. Charles R. Drew died on April 1, 1950, at Alamance General Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina at age 45 after being involved in an automobile accident while traveling through the area.

Dr. Clarence Sherman Massey was the son of Dr. John S. & Katie Massey. He graduated from Howard University in 1925. Clarence had a private medical practice in Wadesboro, NC and was the only Black doctor there for approximately the twenty years preceding his death.
Photo: Dr. Clarence Sherman Massey at his graduation in 1926 from Howard University,
Source: Find A Grave; Anson County NC History

Dr. Eliza Grier Photo: credit-Image from National Library of Medicine
Dr. Richard Edgar Grier Photo: A Historical, Biographical and Statistical Souvenir Howard University 1900

was born and raised in Henderson, North Carolina and she was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition and the first Black woman PhD from Cornell University in 1936.

Obituary

Washington, Beaufort county, North Carolina

Photo credit: taken before 1930 - Is a cropped postcard. Original in collection of The Heritage Room of the Carolinas Genealogical Society. The North Carolina State Archives has a copy.

Pioneering physician and American diplomat.

DR. WARD CHALLENGED JIM CROW
The Indiana History Blog published Nicole Poletika's detailed look at Dr. Joseph H. Ward's role in challenging segregation as the head of Tuskegee, Alabama's Veterans Hospital No. 91 in the 1920s and '30s.
Dr. Ward is on the front row, center (next to the nurse) in this 1933 photograph of Veterans Hospital staff.
Photo courtesy of VA History Highlights, "First African American Hospital Director in VA History,"

Image and narrative source: pages 450-451 From A. B. Caldwell's "History of the American Negro and his Institutions" Vol 4

was one of six African American physicians who started the Blue Ridge Hospital and School of Nursing which formally opened in 1922, in Asheville, N.C.

Photo: McCauley Hospital 1941 - McCauley Private Hospital (Est. 1923).
Photo source: N_53_16_2929 - From the Albert Barden Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC.

He was born in 1863 on a plantation owned by
George and Susan Capehart in Bertie County, North Carolina, according to their list of enslaved people.

Top image: Dr. Lucy Hughes Brown (1863-1911) can be seen seated at the far right in this undated photograph. Dr. Alonzo C. McClennan is seated at the far left. This could be the first graduating class of nurses in between them both.
Bottom image: Dr. Lucy Hughes Brown, enlarged and cropped from left image.
With Dr. Alonzo Clifton McClennan, Dr. Brown cofound the Canon Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1897. The first graduating class was in 1898.

Photograph source: Waring Historical Library, MUSC, Charleston.

Photograph: Dr. M.T. Pope House, 511 S. Wilmington Street, Raleigh, NC

A Medical Perspective For African Americans

A Medical Perspective For African Americans

According to Dr. Quigless, Black people were "dying like flies" out in the country. Because of North Carolina's segregation laws, he was denied practicing privileges at Edgecombe Memorial Hospital for almost ten years.

Left image: Dr. Sophia B. Jones, Canada’s First Black Woman to Earn a Medical Degree
Right image: Trained Nurses, Spelman Seminary- 1897

Source: NYPL, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division. - Collection: Progress of a race: or, The remarkable advancement of the American Negro from the bondage of slavery, ignorance and poverty to the freedom of citizenship, intelligence, affluence, honor and trust. Publisher: J. L. Nichols

Dr. Sylvia Flack grew up on a farm in Spindale, NC, the last of seven children. She graduated from Winston-Salem State’s nursing program in the 1960s and returned to lead it in 1989. At the time, the UNC Board of Governors and NC General Assembly were targeting WSSU’s nursing school for closure. But Dr. Flack, her colleagues, and students fought to keep it alive, and it is now recognized as one of the best in North Carolina. After serving Ram Nation for more than 20 years she retired.

The birth of Thomas C. Unthank on Monday, 01.22.1866 is celebrated on this date. He was an African American Physician.

Affectionately known as "Dr. Val", has served the dental community of Cumberland County for nearly 40 years.

Image description: Left photo - Lincoln Hospital in Durham NC. Pictured in this c 1938 photograph are, from left to right: (front row): Dr. E.P. Norris, Dr. R.P. Randolph, Dr. J.O. Plummer, Dr. J.W.V. Cordice;
(second row) Dr. Ezra Turner, Dr. J.S. Thompson;
(third row) intern, intern, Dr. J.N.B. Mills, Dr. Norman Cordice, intern,
and Dr. J.M. Hubbard;
(fourth row) Dr. A.S. Hunter, intern, Dr. S.L. Warren, Dr. W.A. Cleland.

Right photo - Dr. William A. Cleland examines an infant with Nora T. Allen, R.N. and mother, Dorothy Prince
Source: https://chaamp.virginia.edu/images

Photograph: Dr. William Green Torrence arrived in Asheville in 1906. By 1910 he had established Torrence Hospital, Asheville, NC’s First Black Hospital/ Clinic.
Photo source: HBH193 - Special Collections, UNC Asheville .

with their son James Jr. who also became a physician. Ca. 1910
Dr. Pethel Sr. practiced medicine in Charlotte from 1904 to 1950.
Photograph credit: NANCY PETHEL.
Photograph source: An African American Album: The Black Experience in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. 1992.
.

NOTE: We found different accounts concerning Eliza Simmons Bryant's ethnicity. Also there are different accounts concerning whether she was a free Black woman or enslaved. We give both accounts in this post.
Below: We also added the history about The Eliza Bryant Nursing Home In Ohio .

Eliza was the baby nurse for many Goldsboro children. She was the first Black person to be buried in Willowdale Cemetery. She was buried by white friends as a Testimonial Token, Loyalty, and Faithfulness. She died 10-10-1910; aged ca. 96 years.

Left photograph credit: Monekia Gause, one of Eliza Jane Gause's great granddaughters.
Right photograph credit: Sandy Brooks, one of Eliza Jane Gause's great granddaughters.

Emma Dupree (1897-1992) was an influential Black herbalist from Falkland and Fountain, in Pitt County in North Carolina. She was known locally as “granny woman.” She was the daughter of freed slaves and grew up on the Tar River. She was known for her work with native herbs: Sassafras, white mint, double tansy, rabbit tobacco, maypop, mullein, catnip, horseradish, and silkweed.
Photographs credit: Mary Anne McDonald for the North Carolina Arts Council and North Carolina Folklife Institute.

Held January 13, 14, and 15, 1926, at the Winston - Salem Teachers' College. Winston-Salem, NC.

Many freed slaves—like these in photograph who were in a contraband camp at a Virginia plantation—would suffer from terrible diseases, prominent among them, small pox.
Photograph: Enslaved people who have just escaped from a Virginia plantation in 1862. - Library of Congress

Source: photograph is part of Dr. George H. Evans Papers housed at the Greensboro History Museum.

Her Husband David stands with her in photograph on right.

Henrietta Phelps Lawson Jeffries died on August 22, 1926 in the town of Milton in Caswell County, North Carolina. She is buried at Macedonia A.M.E. Church on Yarborough Road in Milton, North Carolina.

Photograph description with article: Charlotte's Hester Ford, the oldest person in the United States, celebrated her birthday with a drive-through parade due to the coronavirus pandemic. (She is sitting in an opened door, wearing a pink crown with happy birthday on it, and wearing a pink sash. On a tray in front of her is a birthday cake. ) - Photograph credit: Jessica Koscielniak

A Charlotte, NC woman, Mrs. Hester Ford with 260 descendants, celebrates August 15, 2020 as her 116th Birthday! Records say she's the oldest living American.

Dr. Hubert A. Eaton, Sr. (December 2,1916 - September 14, 1991) was born in Fayetteville, NC to Estelle and Chester Arthur Eaton who was a medical doctor. The family moved to Winston Salem, NC where his father taught him a valuable life lesson at 14 years old, after an incident on his job, “You must never be afraid of white people. And you must never, never walk away from adversity. You must stay and deal with it.” Hubert A. Eaton Sr. had a great love for his parents and family, he took to heart their instructions. He knew of the racial discrimination they endured.

Photo description: A photo of nine African American nurses, standing on the steps of a building, who worked at the Camp Sherman Base Hospital in Ohio during World War I.
From the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers. Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries.

James Francis Shober was an African American doctor and the first Black physician in North Carolina.

DR. JOHN CLEMON WILLIAMSON.
Born near Lucama in 1876 to Alex and Gracie Shaw Williamson, John Clemons Williamson attended Slater Industrial (the precursor to Winston-Salem State University), then Leonard Medical School. He returned to Winston-Salem to practice medicine and founded a private sanitarium in 1914.

The Indiana History Blog published Nicole Poletika's detailed look at Dr. Joseph H. Ward's role in challenging segregation as the head of Tuskegee, Alabama's Veterans Hospital No. 91 in the 1920s and '30s.
Dr. Ward is on the front row, center (next to the nurse) in this 1933 photograph of Veterans Hospital staff.
Photo courtesy of VA History Highlights, "First African American Hospital Director in VA History,".

Top image: A picture of the original Jubilee Hospital.
Photo credit: Henderson Institute.

Bottom image: The last location of the Jubilee Hospital is pictured before shutting down (and the current nonprofit location).
Photo credit: Perry Memorial Library Archives.

Jubilee Hospital history source: Compiled by: Phoebe Pollitt, student at Appalachian State University.

also known as Julia P. H. Coleman or Julia Coleman-Robinson, was a pharmacist, entrepreneur, social activist, and business executive. She was the first Black American woman pharmacist to own and operate her own drug store; much later, she was the first Black American woman to run for elective office in the state of New York.

This is Julia Roberts, she was born in 1908. She was 96 when she died in 2004. Mrs. Roberts’ grandmother was enslaved on a plantation in Virginia, and Julia remembered her talking about having to "tend to white babies as a child." Roberts who was a midwife in the Kings Mountain, North Carolina, area for many years was described by many as the backbone and matriarch of her small, rural Black community of Ebenezer.

Greensboro, North Carolina

Photograph: Leonard Medical School At Shaw University alumnus Lt. Urbane F. Bass was willing to give his life to save others. He was killed in action on Oct. 17, 1918. Courtesy U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Leonard Hall, left, was constructed in 1881 and served as the base of operations for the Leonard Medical School. The "new" hospital, shown right, was completed in 1910, just 8 years before the school's closing.
Courtesy State Archives of North Carolina.

Source: Photograph taken of the framed photograph in Leonard building on Shaw's campus, by L.D. Edwards

Photo description: Joyce Nichols, PA-C (center) and aide Shirley Thompson (right) treat Mr. Raymond Hayes at the Lincoln Community Health Center’s foot clinic, Durham, NC, Jan. 2, 1983.
Source: University of North Carolina Archives, and the National Institute of Health.

Margaret Kennedy Goodwin is seen in this photograph assisting a patient at Lincoln Hospital in Durham, NC.
Goodwin was a pioneer in radiology - a branch of medicine that uses imaging technology to diagnose and treat disease.

Lincoln Hospital, Durham, North Carolina

Durham, North Carolina

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THE FIRST Lincoln Hospital was erected on the corner of Proctor Street and Cozart Avenue with a gift of $8,550.00 from Mr. Washington Duke. The plant was completed in July 1901 and was opened for patients in August of the same year. Mr. Washington Duke first had in mind the erection of a monument, on the campus of Trinity College, now Duke University, to the memory of the Negro slaves for the part they played in the dark days of the Civil War. The late Dr. A. M. Moore, Durham's first Negro physician, together with Mr. John Merrick and Dr. S. L. Warren, convinced Mr. Duke that a hospital for the descendants of the slaves would be more serviceable.

Lincoln Hospital (1901-1976) was a medical facility located in Durham, North Carolina founded to serve the African Americans of Durham County and surrounding areas. With original hospital construction financed by the Duke family, Lincoln served as the primary African American hospital in Durham until 1976, when it closed and transferred its inpatient services to Durham County General Hospital.

Washington, NC.

Louise Cecelia Fleming was a graduate of Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, and she was the first Black woman to graduate from the Women’s Medical College at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Manassa Thomas Pope was born in 1858 in Northampton Co., NC and died in 1934 at age 76. He is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Raleigh, NC.
Manassa T. Pope was born free.

(May 17, 1912 – January 13, 2006)
Inventor and visionary was the woman who invented the sanitary pad, which was first a sanitary belt, a precursor to the adhesive maxi pads. Jane Crow’s white American racial discrimination prevented its adoption for thirty years. She was born in 1912, in Monroe, North Carolina and credited her father, Sidney Nathaniel Davidson (June 1890-November 1958), with giving her a thirst for discovering things.

Mary Eliza Green (right) and an unknown friend stand in front of an old care that belonged to a relative. South Street, Raleigh, NC, 1950.

Left photograph: Mary Hayden, 84, with her granddaughter, Mary O. Burnette, about 1942 and two of Hayden's great-grandchildren.
Right photograph: Mary Hayden, about 1919, with her daughter-in-law Hattie Payne Burnette and two of her oldest grandchildren, Lorenzo and infant Juanita.
Source: Black Mountain News Published Feb. 21, 2018

"Mary Hayden 84 who was still working, Mary Burnette standing next to Granny holding my nephew his sister born with veil over face"

Image-Painting, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation. S/NPG.67.19

In all likelihood only one individual has been awarded both Lebanon’s Order of the Cedar and North Carolina’s Order of the Longleaf Pine. Mary (Margaret) Lee Mills, at first glance, may seem like an unlikely candidate for that distinction. Born in rural Pender County, North Carolina in August 1912, Mills hailed from the disenfranchised African-American community of one of the poorest parts of NC. How did she come to travel to Lebanon, much less win the highest award bestowed by the Lebanese government?

“Some families paid me in pigs or chickens. A lot of them didn’t pay me nothing, but love, of course.”
Long after she had delivered her last baby, in primitive homes and barns, she was invited to speak to medical students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I told them,” she said, “there were a few things they didn’t have to learn by reading.” One thing she had to teach them was for doctors and patients to let one another know they were loved.

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Photograph: Caption with it, "North Carolina's “first class of law controlled and class instructed midwives” on the steps of the Beaufort County Courthouse, 1925. (Washington, NC)
Several of the women hold signs printed with lessons they have learned, such as “The New Midwife Must Be Clean” and “We Must Report the Baby's Birth.”
Source: North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library."

"Minnie Wood Perkins was born in Northampton County on January 31, 1910, to Will and Jane Flood Wood. She attended Waters Training School in Winton. She married Claude Deans in 1929 and their only child, Iris, was born in 1931.

Hayley's Pharmacy - Concord, N. C

McNair was the first African American pharmacist in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Left image: Mr. Walter Lewis McNair sitting in his Greensboro drugstore.
Right image: Mrs. Walter Lewis McNair sitting in a chair outside.
Source: Gateway - Triad Digital History Collections
Photographer and dates of photographs are unknown.

She was born in Burke County in 1856 and died in 1943.. She lived near Magnolia her entire life
She is holding Nan Fleming Jeter, born 1905 and died in 1991

Beginning with 15 graduates in 1957, the School of Nursing has educated and trained professional nurses since being established in 1953.

Left image: Photograph of Noble Hall , ca 1923-25
Right image: The first Nursing Class 1957
Source: Bluford Library Archives and Special Collections

The North Carolina Colored Graduate Nurses Association (NCCGNA, later the North Carolina Association of Negro Registered Nurses) was formed at a meeting of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1921.

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Photograph: Dr. E. Victor Maafo (left), the former pastor of Hamlet’s St. Peter’s United Methodist Church visits the historic marker, which honors the Good Samaritan Hospital at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, NC. With Dr. Maafo is Eddie Davis, a public historian in Durham, NC.
Photograph credit: Daily Journal file photo.

Ms. Julia Latta, co-founder of the school served as director from 1903 to 1911 creating a path for future directors over the course of the school’s operation from 1903-1971. They were Mrs. Pattie Carter, 1911-1938; Mrs. Henrietta Farrar, Mrs. Edith Steel Scott and Mrs. Beulah Jackson, 1938-1945 and Mrs. Lucille Zimmerman Williams, 1945-1971.
Credits: Lincoln Health Center -Durham, NC; Durham History Museum; AA Registry

— Landmark study forced all but two Black U.S. medical schools to close

Racial Microaggressions Take A Major Toll On Black Americans
"White people gawking at or complimenting Black people for doing ordinary things is literally harming their health, research shows"
By Michelle Singletary/WAPO
Illustration by Eliana Rodgers for the WAPO
December 4, 2020

Photograph: Free dental clinic for African American children in rural Mecklenberg County, NC in 1923.
Image source: The State Archives of NC. State responsibility for public health began in 1877 when the legislature determined that officers of the Medical Society of North Carolina should make up the State Board of Health.

was an important civil rights legal case that led to the racial integration of hospitals.

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- When WakeMed pediatrician Rasheeda Monroe volunteered as a COVID-19 vaccinator last month, she saw something was missing.

"I noticed that it was an amazing event, over 1,100 people got vaccinated. But, I thought where are the people of color," she said.

Top photograph: Slater hospital, the first African American hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was located on the campus of Slater Industrial Academy and State Normal School (now Winston-Salem State University) was completed 1902. Later this building was used as a men’s dormitory and for home economics class. This building was eventually closed in 1912.

Bottom photograph: Mr. Simon Green Atkins, the founder of Slater Industrial Academy, served as head of the school from 1892-1904. In 1895, the school became Slater Industrial Academy and State Normal School. In 1925, the school became Winston-Salem Teachers College. From 1913 to 1934, Dr. Atkins was head of the institution. Photograph c. 1900.

Source: Digital Forsyth -CG Okelly Library-
Winston Salem State University -

Top left photo: undated, photographer unknown.
Top right photo: by D. Strevel, Capital City Camera Club- courtesy of Preservation North Carolina-NC Archives
Bottom left photo: by Heather Leah/WRAL TV

Today-St. Agnes Hospital-Raleigh NC- What is left of it.
The site bears a Raleigh Historic Property designation, but being on that registry now puts some constraints on what can be done with property. The Department of the Interior, as well as other local groups and St. Augustine University alumni are looking for ways to restore the building as a medical school and museum.

In June of 2015, Penelope Johnson Brown of Pikesville, MD, identified her mother, Madie L. Johnson White (Green), as being the nurse in the middle of the front row of three sitting in the grass. Madie L. Johnson White (Green) was born and raised in Chester, Maryland (Kent Island).

at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh,

Saint Augustine's College established St. Agnes Hospital and Training School for Nurses to provide medical care for and by African Americans. It was the “first” school of nursing in the state of North Carolina for African American students and served as the only hospital that served African Americans until 1960.

Red Cross nurses deliver food to a Charlotte home where a young mother had just died.

Before the Civil War, Avery was owned by Nicholas Woodfin, a state senator and the largest slave owner in Buncombe County, NC. Tempe was a famous nurse who delivered many babies in Asheville, both black and white. In return for her loyalty and service to his family, Nicholas Woodfin gave Tempe several lots in Montford, which she passed on to her descendants when she died in 1917.

The 1919 law was the first foray for North Carolina into eugenics; this law, entitled "An Act to Benefit the Moral, Mental, or Physical Conditions of Inmates of Penal and Charitable Institutions" was quite brief, encompassing only 4 sections. Provision was made for creation of a Board of Consultation, made up of a member of the medical staff of any of the penal or charitable State institutions, and a representative of the State Board of Health, to oversee sterilization that was to be undertaken when "in the judgement of the board hereby created, said operation would be for the improvement of the mental, moral or physical conditions of any inmate of any of the said institutions".

Photo Collage Description: Left image- A page from a eugenics pamphlet in the 1930s Handout Pamphlet- Courtesy of the UNC Wilson Library, NC Collection- Transcript of words on pamphlet At bottom of Post*
Right Image: In this June 22, 2011 photo, Elaine Riddick has her face in a handkerchief and wipes tears from her eyes as she listens to other victims testify before the Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation task force compensation hearing in Raleigh, N.C. Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,600 individuals in the name of “improving” the state’s human stock. Jim R. Bounds- AP

Photo description: A Public health doctor giving tenant family- a Black mother and her children who are standing on the steps of their front porch-- medicine for malaria near Colombia, South Carolina, 1939 (Photo: Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress).

Over 100 midwives existed in Pitt County, NC in the 1920s and only 4 were left in 1968.