Dr. Susan Maria Smith McKinney Steward, Physician

Susan McKinney Steward was Sarah Garnet's younger sister, and equally energetic and ambitious. Admitted to the New York Medical College for Women, a homeopathetic school founded by a wealthy white abolitionist woman, Clarence Sophia Lozier, McKinney graduated as class valedictorian in 1870.

In her medical practice, Steward treated both blacks and whites, and specialized in childhood diseases such as marasmus (a wasting away of the body). White newspapers of the time noted that she had “a handsome bank account and lives well [in the] fashionable quarter of the hill.” Given that homeopathy was much more liberal than traditional branches of medicine, McKinney was welcomed into its professional associations, and became a member of state and county homeopathic societies. Unlike her sister, she was able successfully to combine marriage, work, and feminism.

NYPL: psnypl_scg_394
Portrait Collection

1870

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

John Van Surley DeGrasse seated

John DeGrasse was the younger son of George and Maria DeGrasse. Theodocia Degrasse was his sister and Peter Vogelsang his brother-in-law. After receiving his medical degree from Bowdoin College, John moved to Boston in the early 1850s. In 1863 he volunteered as assistant surgeon with the First North Carolina Volunteers (later the 35th regiment of the USCT). Unlike Peter Vogelsang, he found himself the target of virulent racism from some of the white officers and surgeons. Accused of drunkenness and dereliction of duty in 1864, he was court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from the army. He died soon thereafter in 1868.

Photograph 36.7
The Massachusetts Historical Society

circa 1864

The Museum of African American History, Boston

Dr. James McCune Smith, physician and abolitionist

Born in New York City in 1813, James McCune Smith referred to himself as “the son of a self-emancipated bond-woman” who owed his “liberty to the Emancipation Act of the State of New York.” He attended the Mulberry Street School at the same time as Peter Guignon and was recognized as the school's most talented student. Denied entrance to medical schools in the U.S. on account of his race, Smith matriculated at the University of Glasgow Medical School in Scotland, where he graduated at the top of his class. He returned to New York in the late 1830s and established a pharmaceutical and medical practice on West Broadway. It was in this pharmacy that Philip White apprenticed. Additionally, In the early 1840s, Smith became the physician at the Colored Oprhan Asylum.

A true Renaissance man, Smith had many interests. As a political activist, he was a leader in the antislavery movement, fought for black civil rights, and promoted the education of black children. In the 1850s, he joined the Radical Abolition Party, made up of white and black abolitionists; at its 1856 convention, the party nominated an interracial slate of candidates: white abolitionist Gerrit Smith for president and James McCune Smith for vice president.

As a writer, Smith contributed newspaper columns to Frederick Douglass’ Paper, published essays on culture and politics in the Anglo-African Magazine, and even wrote poetry.

Smith married Malvina Barnet in the early 1840s. Very little is known about her. She bore him many children, most of whom died in childhood. Long in poor health, Smith died early in 1865.

Week's

NYPL ID number: 1804234
Portrait Collection

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Peter W. Ray, M.D.; New York City

When Peter Guignon married Cornelia Ray after Rebecca''s death, Peter Williams Ray became his brother-in-law. Born in 1825, Ray attended Castleton Medical College in Vermont, graduating around 1850. He then settled in Brooklyn where he opened a medical practice and pharmacy. Because Peter Guignon had no steady career but had shifted from trade to trade without much success, Ray took him into his pharmacy to work as a druggist (there were no licensing requirements for druggists at the time). Throughout his life Ray was a political activist, ardent freemason, and staunch member of St. Philip's Church. He died in 1906.

NYPL ID number: 1215940

John A. Kenney, The Negro in Medecine. Tuskegee Institute Press, 1912. Pl. 19, left.

General Research & Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations