Famed surgeon Daniel Hale Williams was born January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. As a young boy, Williams worked as an apprentice for a shoemaker but disliked it so much that he ran away. After completing secondary school in Wisconsin, he developed a passion for medicine and became an apprentice for the esteemed surgeon, Dr. Henry W. Palmer. After graduating from the Chicago Medical College in 1883, Williams opened a medical practice in Chicago where he treated both African-American and white patients. In 1989 he became the first African-American doctor appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health. Although he was enjoying a successful career, Williams was frustrated with the discrimination of most hospitals that refused to hire African-American people. As a result, he founded the Provident Hospital and Training School where he taught and hired African-American people, making it the first hospital to have an interracial staff. In 1893, Williams performed a successful surgery of the heart to repair a stab wound in the patient, James Cornish, becoming the first African American ever to do so. In the same year, Williams was appointed chief surgeon at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington D.C. Continuing to forge ahead among discrimination and segregation in that era, in 1895, Williams and a few medical colleagues co-founded the National Medical Association, which represented African American physicians and health professionals.
In 1898, Williams married Alice Johnson, and they moved to Chicago and returned to Provident Hospital. He would go on to earn honorary degrees from Wilberforce University and Howard University and was honored with a Historical State Marker in Pennsylvania on U.S. Route 22 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
To learn more about Dale Hale Williams, visit:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/williams-daniel-hale-1856-1931/
http://www.african-american-scientists.com/bios/daniel-hale-williams.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Hale-Williams
http://www.jsums.edu/gtec/dr-daniel-hale-williams/
https://www.biography.com/people/daniel-hale-williams-9532269 http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM426N_Daniel_Hale_Williams