James McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865) was an American medical doctor, apothecary, abolitionist and author. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree. His M.D. was awarded by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland, where a building has been dedicated to him. After his return to the United States, he also became the first African American to run a pharmacy in the nation.
In addition to practicing as a physician for nearly 20 years at the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan, Smith was a public intellectual: he contributed articles to medical journals, participated in learned societies, and wrote numerous essays and articles drawing from his medical and statistical training. He used his training in medicine and statistics to refute common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine, and society in general. He was invited as a founding member of the New York Statistics Society in 1852, which promoted a then new science. Later he was elected as a member in 1854 of the recently founded American Geographic Society. He was never admitted to the American Medical Association or local medical associations, Note: Glasgow University's matriculation album for 1832 lists Smith as "the first natural son of Samuel, merchant, New York" (translated from Latin) very likely as a result of the systemic racism that Smith confronted throughout his medical career. In 2018, Smith received a posthumous fellowship from the New York Academy of Medicine.2018-Dr. James McCune Smith Receives Posthumous Fellowship
He has been most well known for his leadership as an abolitionist: a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with Frederick Douglass he helped start the National Council of Colored People in 1853, the first permanent national organization for blacks. Douglass called Smith "the single most important influence on his life."Morgan (2006), p. 612 Smith was one of the Committee of Thirteen, who organized in 1850 in Manhattan to resist the newly passed Fugitive Slave Law by aiding refugee slaves through the Underground Railroad. Other leading abolitionist activists were among his friends and colleagues. From the 1840s, Smith lectured on race and abolitionism and wrote numerous articles to refute racist ideas about black capacities.
Both Smith and his wife were of mixed African and European descent. As he became economically successful, Smith built a house in a mostly white neighborhood; in the 1860 census he and his family were classified as white, along with their neighbors. (In the census of 1850, while living in a predominately African-American neighborhood, they had been classified as mulatto.) Smith served for nearly 20 years as the physician at the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York. After it was burned down in July 1863 by a mob in draft riots in Manhattan, in which nearly 100 blacks were killed, Smith moved his family and practice to Brooklyn for their safety. Many other blacks left Manhattan for Brooklyn at the same time. The parents stressed education for their children. In the 1870 census, his widow and children continued to be classified as white.
Early life and education Smith was born into slavery in 1813 in Manhattan and was set free on July 4, 1827, at the age of 14, by the Emancipation Act of New York. That was the date when New York officially freed its remaining slaves. His mother Lavinia was born enslaved. He later described her as a "self-emancipated woman". She was born into slavery in South Carolina and had been transported to New York as an enslaved woman. Note: In the 1850 census, Smith's household included Lavinia Smith, age 67; and three other older women. In the 1860 census, still part of Smith's household, Lavinia listed her birthplace as South Carolina.
He grew up only with his mother. As an adult, McCune Smith alluded to white ancestry through his mother's family, saying he had kin in the South, some of whom were slaveholders and others slaves.
Smith attended the African Free School (AFS) #2 on Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where he was described as an "exceptionally bright student". He was selected to deliver an oratory to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French war hero who visited the school on September 10, 1824, during his tour of the country. Smith was among numerous boys from the school who went on to have brilliant careers, some of whom he worked with as adults in the abolitionist cause.
In the course of his studies, Smith was tutored by Rev. Peter Williams Jr., a graduate of the African Free School who had been ordained in 1826 as the second African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. Upon graduation, he applied to Columbia University and Geneva Medical College in New York State, but was denied admission due to racial discrimination. Williams encouraged Smith to attend the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He and abolitionist benefactors of the AFS provided Smith with money for his trip overseas and his education. Smith kept a journal of his sea voyage that expressed his sense of mission. After arriving in Liverpool and walking along the waterfront, he thought: "I am free!"
Through abolitionist connections, he was welcomed there by members of the London Agency Anti-Slavery Society. According to the historian Thomas M. Morgan, Smith enjoyed the relative racial tolerance in Scotland and England, which judicially abolished slavery in the 1770s. (New York abolished all slavery in 1827.) He studied at the University of Glasgow and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1835, a master's degree in 1836, and a medical degree in 1837. He completed an internship in Paris.
Smith knew he would face discrimination upon his return. When he tried to book a trip back to the United States after completing his studies, the ship captain refused passage because of Smith's race. His passage was secured by an intervention from John Murray, a prominent Glasgow abolitionist who wrote to the captain directly.Contraband importation -The American Anti-Christian prejudice against coloured persons, imported into Scotland -Glasgow New Liberator of May 20, 1837 When Smith did return to Manhattan, he was met with a hero's welcome by his former classmates and teachers who applauded his determination to fight for civil rights on American soil.
Marriage and family After establishing himself upon his return to New York City, in the early 1840s Smith married Malvina Barnett, a free woman of color who had graduated from the Rutgers Female Institute. The couple had eleven children; five survived to adulthood (the name of one child is unknown):Smith Family Bible Frederick Douglass Smith (d. 1854)Smith Cemetery Card, Cypress Hills Cemetery Peter Williams Smith (d. 1854) Mary S. Smith James Ward Smith (born 1845) became a teacher; he married and had an independent household by 1870 Henry M. Smith (1847 – d. before 1859) Amy G. Smith (–1849 – d. December 1849) Mary (also called Maude) Smith, born ––56; never married; became a teacher and was living with her widowed brother Donald in 1900 in Queens. (Note: In the 1900 census, her birth was reported as September 1842, but this is not consistent with her age in the 1860 and 1870 censuses, and she did not appear in the 1850 census.) Donald Smith (born 1858) became a lawyer, married and was a widower by 1900, living in Queens. His household included his older sister Maude and two siblings of his late wife: his widowed brother-in-law Edward, a physician born in England, and sister-in-law Emma Callaghan, an unmarried teacher. Year: 1900; Census Place: Queens Ward 4, Queens, New York; Roll: 1149; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 676; FHL microfilm: 1241149. Retrieved May 4, 2012 . John Murray Smith, (born February 1860), named after his father's Scottish friend, John Murray worked in Florida in an orange grove in the 1880s, per the Florida 1885 census. He married in 1888, and their three children were born in Florida. By 1900, he returned to Brooklyn with his family, and worked there as a printer. "John M. Smith," Year: 1900; Census Place: Brooklyn Ward 22, Kings, New York; Roll: 1059; Page: 17B; Enumeration District: 350; FHL microfilm: 1241059 In 2019, a descendent rediscovered his maternal ancestry through various genealogical records. His son was Jay Murray Smith, who married a Rose (or Rosa) Larm from New York. Guy Beaumont Smith, born 1862, first worked as a seaman. By 1900, he was married with several children and worked as a salesman. His youngest daughter was named Antoinette.
In 1850, the senior Smiths' household included four older women: Lavinia Smith, age 67 (his mother: b. c.1783 – d. bet.1860-1870), born in South Carolina and listed first as head of household; Sarah Williams, 57 (widow of Peter Williams Jr.); Amelia Jones, 47; and Mary Hewlitt, 53, who were likely relatives or friends. By then Smith and his wife Malvina had three children: James, Henry, and Amy. Each member of the household was classified as mulatto (or of mixed ancestry). All but Lavinia Smith were born in New York. They lived in a mixed neighborhood in the Fifth Ward; in the census, nearly all other neighbors on the page were classified as white; many were immigrants from England, Ireland, and France.
By 1860, Smith was doing very well; he had moved to Leonard Street within the Fifth Ward and had a mansion built by white workmen.Haroon Kharem, "Medical Doctor, Integrationist and Black Nationalist", in Noel S. Anderson, Education As Freedom: African-American Thought and Activism, New York: Lexington Books, 2009, p. 18. His total real property was worth $25,000. His household included a live-in servant, Catherine Grelis from Ireland. Listed as a separate household at his address were Sara D. Williams, 57, and Mary Hertell (should be Hewlitt, as above), 50. (These were likely the same Sara and Mary as in the 1850 census, although their ages did not change.) No one on this census page had a racial designation.Year: 1860; Census Place: New York Ward 5 District 2, New York, New York; Roll: M653_790; Page: 585; Image: 429; Family History Library Film: 803790, online at Ancestry.com By the conventions of the time, this means that they were classified as white by the census enumerator; totals of white persons only are given at the bottom of the page.
After the draft riots in Manhattan in 1863, Smith and his family were among prominent African Americans who left Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn, then still separate cities.KAREN MATTHEWS "Descendants of 1st black US doctor mark NYC grave", Washington Post, September 24, 2010. He no longer felt safe in their old neighborhood.
In the 1870 census, Malvina (now a widow) and their four children were living in Ward 15, Brooklyn. All were classified as white. Their son James W. Smith, who had married a white woman, was living in a separate household and working as a teacher; he was also classified as white. The Smith children still at home were Maud, 15; Donald, 12; John, 10; and Guy, 8; all were attending school. These five Smith children survived to adulthood: James, Maud, Donald, John and Guy. The men married white spouses, but Maud never married. All were classified as white from 1860 onward.
They worked as teachers, a lawyer, and business people. Smith's unique achievements as a pioneering African-American physician were rediscovered by twentieth-century historians. They were relearned by his descendants in the twenty-first century, who identified as white and did not know about him with the passage of generations. A three-times-great-granddaughter took a history class and found his name in her grandmother's family Bible. In 2010, several Smith descendants commissioned a new tombstone for his grave in Brooklyn. They gathered to honor him and their African-American ancestry.
Career
Medicine