Dr. Nathan Francis Mossell (From the Collections of the University of Pennsylvania Archives; photo subject to copyright restrictions)
In 1895, Dr. Nathan Francis Mossell helped rally African Americans in Philadelphia to establish the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School, one of the first hospitals in the United States where black doctors treated black patients.
Also a surgeon, Mossell served as the hospital’s chief of staff and medical director for more than three decades. He championed women in medicine and was a civil rights activist.
The native of Hamilton, Canada, died in 1946. He was 90.