No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school. Brown tells the stories of these doctors from the perspective of a black woman in medicine. Her journey as a medical student already has parallels to those of black women who entered medicine generations before her. What she uncovers about these women's struggles, their need to work twice as hard and be twice as good, and their ultimate success serves as instruction and inspiration for new generations considering a career in medicine or science.
Jasmine Brown is a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed an MPhil in the history of science, medicine, and technology at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. As an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, she founded the Minority Association of Rising Scientists and served as its president, working to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in science and medicine.