On this day, Rebecca Lee (later Crumpler) graduated from the New England Female Medical College, becoming the first African American woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. Alongside trailblazers like Rebecca Cole and Susan McKinney Steward, she helped open the doors for future generations of Black women in medicine. Dr. Crumpler would go on to serve formerly enslaved people in the post-Civil War South and author one of the first medical publications by a Black physician.
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