Sophia B. Jones
(1857 – 1932)
Dr. Jones became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Michigan’s Medical School in 1885 and dedicated her career to fighting for health equity for Black people.
Born in Chatham, Ont., Jones was fascinated by science and wanted to study medicine from a young age. But she could not access full medical training at the University of Toronto because it did not accept women at the time. Instead, she was accepted to the University of Michigan, which had started admitting women in 1870.
She became the first Black woman to graduate from the school and then became the first Black faculty member at Atlanta’s Spelman College in 1885, where she organized the first training program for nurses in the American South.
During her long career, she practiced medicine in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Kansas City, spearheading many public health programs and pushing for health equity for Black Americans. She published the retrospective article “Fifty Years of Negro Public Health” in 1913, looking at systemic barriers to health care for Black people.