Louise Celia "Lulu" Fleming (January 28, 1862 – June 20, 1899) was an American

medical doctor A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

. She was one of the first

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

to graduate from the

Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

. She returned from Africa to improve her skills and she was the first African American woman to be commissioned for work in Africa by the Woman's American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society.

Biography

Fleming was born on January 28, 1862 to enslaved parents on Col. Lewis Michael Fleming's Hibernia

Plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

Hibernia ''Hibernia'' () is the Classical Latin name for Ireland. The name ''Hibernia'' was taken from Greek geographical accounts. During his exploration of northwest Europe (c. 320 BC), Pytheas of Massalia called the island ''Iérnē'' (written ). ...

Clay County Clay County is the name of 18 counties in the United States. Most are named for Henry Clay, U.S. Senator and statesman: * Clay County, Alabama * Clay County, Arkansas (named for John Clayton, and originally named Clayton County) * Clay County, Flor ...

, Florida. Fleming's parents had unique backgrounds; her mother was half Congolese and her father was half white. When Fleming was young, her father fought with the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

and died after two years of service. In December of 1877, Fleming converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

at age 15 at the

Bethel Baptist Institutional Church The Bethel Church (formerly Bethel Baptist Institutional Church) is a historically-black Baptist megachurch in Jacksonville, Florida, in the United States. Founded in 1838, it is the city's oldest Baptist congregation. The attendance is 12,000 ...

Jacksonville Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

. She graduated from

Shaw University Shaw University is a private Baptist historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. Founded on December 1, 1865, Shaw University is the oldest HBCU to begin offering courses in ...

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA ...

on May 27, 1885. Fleming became a public school teacher in

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...

, Florida. In 1886, the ''Woman’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society of the West'' invited Fleming to become their missionary representative to the

Congo Free State ''(Work and Progress) , national_anthem = Vers l'avenir , capital = Vivi Boma , currency = Congo Free State franc , religion = Catholicism (''de facto'') , leader1 = Leopo ...

, now the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. She accepted the invitation and arrived in the Congo in 1887, stationed at Palabala. She worked in the Congo with girls, teaching Sunday school, primary classes and English classes. Fleming returned to the United States in 1891 due to failing health. With the idea of alleviating illness in the Congo, Fleming enrolled in the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

in 1891. The WMCP was the first medical college established for the education of women to become doctors; defying social norms and allowing women the opportunity to obtain high levels of education. By 1925, eighteen African American women had graduated from WMCP; one of which was Louise Fleming who graduated in 1895.Gamble, Vanessa Northington. "“Sisters of a Darker Race”: African American Graduates of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1867–1925." Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 95 no. 2, 2021, p. 169-197. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/bhm.2021.0029. pg. 170-171 Fleming returned to her mission in the Congo, becoming the only African American woman doctor in the country. In 1898, she contracted

African trypanosomiasis African trypanosomiasis, also known as African sleeping sickness or simply sleeping sickness, is an insect-borne parasitic infection of humans and other animals. It is caused by the species ''Trypanosoma brucei''. Humans are infected by two typ ...

and returned to the United States. Fleming died on June 20, 1899 at the Samaritan Hospital in Philadelphia at the age of 37.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleming, Louise Celia 1862 births 1899 deaths 19th-century American slaves Shaw University alumni Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania alumni People from Clay County, Florida Baptist missionaries from the United States African-American missionaries 19th-century American women physicians 19th-century American physicians 19th-century African-American physicians Baptist missionaries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo American expatriates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Female Christian missionaries 19th-century African-American women