Daniel Hale Williams, American Surgeon

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 - August 4, 1931) was an African-American surgeon. When Williams graduated from what is today Northwestern University Medical School, he opened a private practice where his patients were white and black. Black doctors, however, were not allowed to work in American hospitals. As a result, in 1891, Williams founded the Provident Hospital and training school for nurses in Chicago. This was established mostly for the benefit of African-American residents, to increase their accessibility to health care but its staff and patients were integrated from the start. In 1893, Williams became the first African-American on record to have successfully performed pericardium surgery when he operated on a knife wound patient, James Cornish. That same year, during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. a post he held until 1898. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for African-American doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only African-American doctor in the American College of Surgeons. He died of a stroke in 1931 at the age of 75. No photographer credited, undated

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Negro Negroes Pericardium Provident Surgeon Surgery

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