Born in Delaware, Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895) was raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt where together they cared for their ill neighbors. When she graduated from the New England Female Medical College, the first U.S. women’s medical school, in 1864, she became the first African American woman doctor in the U.S. After the Civil War, she moved to Virginia to care for freedmen and women. Crumpler then married, moved back to Boston and began to treat patients from her home. Her Book of Medical Discourses is based on her practice.
