This year, as America remembers those who shaped our nation over the last 250 years, Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson should be honored for her dedicated fight for life. Born in Texas, the only child of a Methodist minister and a school teacher, Mildred would follow the town doctor on his rounds. From his horse and buggy, he told her that if she wanted to be a doctor, she should “just go right ahead” and do it.
So in 1951, after graduating from a segregated public high school, Jefferson became the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. She also was the first woman to intern at Boston City Hospital, the first female surgeon at the Boston University Medical Center, the first woman admitted to the Boston Surgical Society, and a professor of surgery at Boston University Medical School. Over her career, Jefferson was awarded 28 honorary degrees.
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