#WEARECRUMPLER

NATIONAL BLACK WOMEN PHYSICIANS DAY

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that, on behalf of

the constituents of the Eighteenth Congressional District of Texas, I take

great pride in recognizing Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler on the occasion of the

National Black Women Physicians Day. 

It is my great privilege to declare

this day, February 8, as National Black Women Physicians Day in the 18*

Congressional District of Texas. 

You are deserving of our utmost esteem for

your gracious contributions, and are indeed worthy of the respect, admiration

and commendation of the United States Congress.

 Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first African American woman doctor in the United States. She completed medical school at the New England Female Medical College and received her M.D. in 1864.

Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was born free on February 8, 1831, to Absolum and Matilda (Webber) Davis in Christiana, Delaware. She was raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania who was noted to have provided health care to her neighbors. Crumpler attended the West Newton English and Classical School in West Newton, Massachusetts. By 1852, twenty-one-year-old Davis was living in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she worked as a nurse for eight years. She enrolled in the New England Female Medical College in 1860. Her acceptance at the college was highly unusual as most medical schools did not admit African Americans at that time, and there were no black female doctors among the 54,000 physicians in the U.S. At that time, only 300 white women were doctors. Despite its reluctance, the institution admitted Davis. She won a tuition award from the Wade Scholarship Fund created by the Ohio abolitionist Benjamin Wade and graduated on March 1, 1864, four years after her admission to the institution.

While living in Charleston, Rebecca Davis married Wyatt Lee, a Virginia native and formerly enslaved person. Lee died of tuberculosis on April 18, 1863. Two years later, on May 24, 1865, she married Arthur Crumpler in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Crumpler, a formerly enslaved person who served in the Union Army, eventually worked at the West Newton English and Classical School. The couple had one child, Lizzie Sinclair Crumpler, born in 1870.

Dr. Crumpler first practiced medicine in Boston and specialized in caring for women, children, and the poor. She moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 1865 to minister to freed people through the Freedmen’s Bureau. Crumpler returned to Boston in 1869, where she practiced from her home on Beacon Hill and dispensed nutritional advice to poor women and children. In 1883, she published a medical guidebook, Book of Medical Discourses, which primarily advised women on their families health care.

Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died on March 9, 1895, in the Hyde Park section of Boston and was buried in nearby Fairview Cemetery. She was 64 at the time of her death. In 1989, she was honored for her groundbreaking achievements when Saundra Maass-Robinson, M.D. and Patricia Whitley, M.D. founded the Rebecca Lee Society, which supports and promotes black women physicians. #nbwpd

On February 3rd, 2021, three Black Women Physicians - KaNisha Hall, M.D. (Anesthesiologist), OsCiriah Press, M.D. (Internal Medicine Hospitalist), and Sonya Sloan, M.D. (Orthopedic Surgeon) - started a petition to make National Black Women Physicians' Day an official holiday in the United States. 

Proudly, on February 5th, 2021, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the U.S. Representative for Texas's 18th Congressional District, recognized February 8th as National Black Women Physicians' Day with a formal Congressional Recognition. This day was chosen in honor of Rebecca Lee Crumpler, M.D., the FIRST Black Woman Physician in the U.S.