Nellie Louise Young (June 7, 1907 – September 22, 1997) was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Early life and education

Young was born in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, Maryland, to Howard E. Young, Maryland's first African American pharmacist, and

Estelle Hall Young Estelle Hall Young (1884-1938) was a leader of the African-American women's suffrage movement in Baltimore, Maryland. She founded the Colored Women's Suffrage Club and worked tirelessly to support suffrage for African-American people. Biography ...

. Her father's pharmacy served as a place of inspiration for Young as a child: "I admired the doctors," she recalled, "and I wanted to be able to send my prescriptions to my father's drugstore." She attended the old Colored High School (now Frederick Douglass High School) in Baltimore. Following her graduation in 1924, Young enrolled in Howard University where she earned her

bachelor of science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in social sciences in 1927, and later obtained her medical degree from the Howard University School of Medicine in 1930. She was initiated into the Alpha chapter of

Alpha Kappa Alpha Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. () is the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of sixteen stud ...

sorority.

Career

Young initially served as an intern at

Freedmen's Hospital Howard University Hospital, previously known as Freedmen's Hospital, is a major hospital located in Washington, D.C., built on the site of the previous Griffith Stadium. The hospital has served the African-American community in the area for over ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, after she was not accepted to the Provident Hospital in Baltimore due to the lack of housing accommodations for women. After her internship, Dr. Young opened her own practice in offices above her father's drugstore in 1932. In 1934, she accepted an invitation from W.E.B. DuBois to attend a NAACP conference. Around the same time, she was appointed staff physician at the Maryland Training School for Girls, where she served from 1933 to 1940. When the Baltimore health department budget was cut in 1933, Young volunteered her services to ensure coverage in the colored schools. Young also advocated for frank and practical sex education for girls. Young believed that physicians should be free to choose their medical specialities "regardless of sex, race, color, and creed." Young's initial medical specialization was

pediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...

, but after the death of an infant, she switched her specialization to

gynecology Gynaecology or gynecology (see spelling differences) is the area of medicine that involves the treatment of women's diseases, especially those of the reproductive organs. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, forming the combined are ...

. During that time, she became the only African American physician to receive training in birth control at the Baltimore Birth Control Clinic, where she was trained by Dr. Bessie Moses. With funding from the Baltimore Birth Control Clinic, Dr. Young opened a

Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...

Clinic, located at 1523 McCulloh Street, which was one of only three such clinics then staffed entirely by African Americans in the entire United States in May 1938. After ten years at the clinic, Young was granted residency to specialize in

ob-gyn Obstetrics and Gynaecology (also spelled as Obstetrics and Gynecology; abbreviated as Obs and Gynae, O&G, OB-GYN and OB/GYN) is the medical specialty that encompasses the two subspecialties of obstetrics (covering pregnancy, childbirth, and t ...

at Provident Hospital, where she served as chief from 1950 to 1963. She worked at several area hospitals, often integrating the staff, until her retirement in 1984 after fifty-two years of practicing medicine.

Death

Young died in 1997, at the age of 90, of

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

. She is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Baltimore.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, N. Louise 1907 births 1997 deaths Physicians from Baltimore Howard University College of Medicine alumni 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century African-American women 20th-century American physicians 20th-century African-American physicians