America's first black doctor, James McCune Smith, finally gets a tombstone

[malaise]

http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-8945-descendants-of-1st-black-us-doctor-mark-nyc-grave.html
<snip>

White descendants of the nation's first professionally trained African-American doctor gathered in a cemetery on Sunday to dedicate a tombstone at the unmarked grave where he was buried in 1865.

Smith, born in New York City in 1813, wanted to be a doctor but was denied entry to medical schools in the United States. He earned a degree from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, then returned to New York to practice. Besides being a doctor, he was celebrated in his lifetime as a writer and an anti-slavery leader.

Although scholars have written books about Smith, who set up a medical practice in lower Manhattan and became the resident physician at an orphanage, his descendants knew nothing about him until recently.

The story of why Smith was nearly overlooked by history and buried in an unmarked grave is in part due to the centuries-old practice of light-skinned blacks passing as white to escape racial prejudice. Smith's mother had been a slave; his father was white. Three of his children lived to adulthood, and they all apparently passed as white, scholars say.

Greta Blau, Smith's great-great-great-granddaughter, made the connection after she took a course at Hunter College on the history of blacks in New York. She did some research and realized that James McCune Smith the trailblazing black doctor was the same James McCune Smith whose name was inscribed in a family Bible belonging to Martignoni, her grandmother.

Her first response was, "But he was black. I'm white."

Blau, of New Haven, Conn., concluded that after Smith's death, his surviving children must have passed as white, and their children and grandchildren never knew they had a black forbear, let alone such an illustrious one.
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Racism is madness

[hfojvt]

1. that's too bad

I didn't even know he was a DUer.


Although, about tombstones from 1865. I wonder how many DUers know where their great-great grandparents are buried. I do family history research and have only been to 7 out of the 16 in my family and my siblings and cousins probably would have no clue. Going back one more generation is even tougher. I have one great-great-great grandfather whose tombstone from 1881 has fallen over. The three foot spires do not last when the ground settles.

[malaise]

2. LOL

I know where to find most of our dead.

[Roon]

4. I don't know exactly how many greats

but i have a great-grandfather who fought for the south during the civil war. He's buried in nebraska.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Wow. That's a very cool story. It got me thinking about race issues and right now I

am researching "passing for white" and finding all kinds of interesting news articles chronicling the lives of people who either chose to pass or did not. I found a list of some books that I think I shall try to get from the library, so I can read something more in-depth.

[malaise]

5. You should undertake research in the Caribbean

I know families that have been destroyed in the recent pass of that 'passing for white' crap.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Yeah, some of these articles are talking about how some people just up and broke all ties

with their families. In other cases they only let them visit through the servant's entrance. It is heartbreaking. On the other hand, there were many people interviewed in these articles who had such strong ties to family and pride in who they were that passing was never even considered an option by them.

[malaise]

8. The minority do it but there are some awful stories

Three of my sisters went to college in Kansas way back in the 60s. My oldest sister is fair with long dark hair and eyes that pass for American Indian. Somehow her landlady thought she was Chinese and rented her an apartment, but when my second sister arrived the landlady gave them notice because they didn't want black people on their property. The irony is that my second sister has much more European features than big sis, but she's darker with the same hair. Big sister was so worried about it that she never told second sister why they moved until fairly recently at a family reunion.

[joeybee12]

6. Very interesting story...KNR

[Fla_Democrat]

9. Why? What did he post?

:smoke:

[Radical Activist]

10. Interesting.

Thanks for posting.