Remember Milfred F. Jefferson this month | News, Sports, Jobs

Black Historical past month simply completed and Girls’s Historical past month has begun. Mildred Fay Jefferson is a reputation not talked about final month by Black Lives Matter supporters and can most likely be lacking from any program touting the fantastic deeds carried out by girls, some in opposition to nice odds.

As a baby, Jefferson would observe the city physician round in his horse-drawn buggy whereas he made home calls within the small Texas city of Carthage.

She graduated from the segregated highschool at age 15 and earned a bachelor’s diploma from Texas School in three years.

She was thought-about too younger to attend medical faculty so she entered Tufts College and earned a grasp’s diploma in biology. This might make her about 21 years outdated and it appears she was not prevented from attaining objectives due to the colour of her pores and skin.

After Tufts, Jefferson went on to graduate from Harvard Medical College in 1951 and have become a member of the Boston Surgical Society, the primary black lady to take action in each areas. That’s fairly a primary in 1951.

Possibly the rationale Dr. Jefferson isn’t used as a mannequin for black women is as a result of she was a co-founder of the Nationwide Proper to Life Committee. She traveled the nation talking on the topic. She was usually quoted saying “I grew to become a doctor with a view to save lives, to not destroy them.”

Dr. Jefferson reminded folks how Margaret Sanger, founding father of Deliberate Parenthood and the contraception motion, allied these actions with the eugenics perception of suppressing the replica of these thought-about unfit. This included non-whites, the poor and the disabled.

Did Dr. Jefferson’s pro-life work preserve her off the Black Historical past month calendar? Let’s see if her title comes up for Girls’s Historical past this month.

(Data from BlackPast.org and RelevantRadio.com)

CORLEEN PROULX,

Atlanta