Dr. Halle
Tanner Dillon Johnson
First Black Female Physician Admitted to Practice Medicine
___________
Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson was born on October 17,1864, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She became the first woman ever admitted, on examination, to practice medicine in Alabama.
Her brother was Henry Ossawa Tanner, famed painter of religious themes and landscapes. Upon graduating with honors from the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia, Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee offered her the school's first resident physician position. Washington specifically desired a Black to fill this position, and finding one capable of passing Alabama's rigorous medical examination ended a four-year search.
Shortly after her arrival to Tuskegee, Washington had arranged for her to go to Montgomery and prepare for the ten day exam with Dr. Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette, the first black physician to pass the Alabama medical exam. Considering her color and sex in Alabama, Halle's attempt gained national attention. Three weeks later, Halle took the exam and passed it.
Gibbs
4/2/07
[From Wikpedia ]
--Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson (1864 – 26 April 1901) was an American physician who in 1891 became the first female African-American doctor in Alabama.--
Johnson was born Halle Tanner
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the eldest daughter of nine children to Benjamin
Tucker and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner. Johnson was well educated and as a
young girl became familiar with the work of prominent African-American
intellectuals. She worked with her father on The Christian Recorder, a
publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he ministered.
Around the time of her graduation, African-American educator Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had written to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania to request a nomination for a teaching position he had been struggling to fill for four years. He hoped to find an African-American physician to serve the school and its surrounding community. Johnson accepted Washington's offer of US$600 a month, including lodging and meals, and arrived to begin her service in August 1891.
In 1886 Johnson married Charles Dillon, and the couple had a child before her husband's sudden death. A widow at 24, Johnson returned to live with her family and decided to enter medical school. After three years of study at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, she earned her M.D. in 1891, graduating with honors [edit] Career
Before beginning her new job, however, young Dr. Dillon had to face a significant obstacle: passing the Alabama State Medical Examination. The very fact that she was sitting for the examination caused a public stir in Montgomery, Alabama. She spent ten days taking the exam, addressing a different area of medicine each day. Her examiners included the directors and leading figures of most of the state's major medical institutions. Dillon impressed them with her responses and she passed the test.
During her brief tenure at Tuskegee she was responsible for the health care of the school's 450 students and 30 faculty and staff. She also established a training school for nurses and founded the Lafayette Dispensary to serve the health care needs of local residents, often mixing medicines herself for their use. She also taught two classes each day. [edit] Personal life Johnson's tenure at Tuskegee ended in 1894 when she married the Reverend John Quincy Johnson, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and math instructor at Tuskegee. The couple moved first to Columbia, South Carolina, where Reverend Johnson became president of Allen University, a private school for black students.
They later moved from Hartford, Connecticut to Atlanta, Georgia, and then to Princeton, New Jersey, as Reverend Johnson pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in theology. Finally, in 1900 the couple settled in Nashville, Tennessee with their three children, and Reverend Johnson became the pastor of Saint Paul A.M.E. Church. Johnson died in Nashville from complications during childbirth.
