MAY CHINN

May Chinn was an African-American physician who never planned on becoming a doctor. Originally, she wanted to be a musician, but she changed from music to science after receiving encouragement from a professor at Columbia Teachers College. This decision led to a distinguished career in medicine. In 1926, she interned at Harlem Hospital. Because she could not get work at the hospitals when she graduated, Chinn started her own family practice. She treated people who otherwise would not have received medical care, often working in dangerous neighborhoods. Because of her interest in improving the health conditions of her patients in Harlem, she took a master's degree in Public Health from Columbia University in 1933. During the 1940s, May Chinn became interested in the diseases of her elderly patients, many of whom developed cancer. Although she had finally received admitting privileges at Harlem Hospital in 1940, she could practice at no other hospital. She died in 1980.

HELEN O. DICKENS

Helen Octavia Dickens was a doctor, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and former associate dean of medicine. She was a 1934 graduate of the University of Illinois School of Medicine, the only African-American woman in her graduating class. She spent two years at Provident Hospital in Chicago and soon worked with Dr. Virginia Alexander in a birthing-home practice in North Philadelphia. In 1943, Dickens attended the Penn Graduate School of Medicine for one year concentrating in obstetrics and gynecology. Two years later, she became the first female African-American board-certified ob-gyn in Philadelphia. In that same year, Dickens became director of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Mercy Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia. Another notable achievement of Dickens was the founding of the Teen Clinic at Penn for school-age mothers in the inner city. She died in 1999.

DOROTHY L. BROWN

Dorothy Lavinia Brown was the first Black female surgeon in the South. In 1944, she enrolled at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated four years later in the top third of her class. Brown started as an intern at Harlem hospital in New York where she haced strong opposition to becoming a surgeon. She went back to Meharry and got her a residency there and completed it in 1954. Dorothy Brown became the first African-American female surgeon in the South. Brown served as the educational director of the Riverside-Meharry Clinical Rotation Program and the chief of surgery at Riverside. She then became the attending surgeon at George W. Hubbard Hospital and professor of surgery at the Meharry Medical College. She is a fellow of the American College of Surgery and is also a much sought after speaker on medical and political issues.