Daniel Hale Williams was born in Hollidaysburg,
Pennsylvania
on January 18, 1856 to a free mulatto property owner and went to
school in Annapolis, Maryland, Rockford, Illinois and Janesville,
Wisconsin
before studying medicine with a leading surgeon in his office.
After five years of this study he graduated from Chicago Medical
College
of Northwestern University in 1883. In 1891, he founded Provident
Hospital in Chicago, the first interracial hospital to train black
doctors and nurses with Dr. Frank Billings as a member of the staff.
In 1893, he became the first African-American surgeon to suture
a pericardium. His daring--and successful--heart surgery was performed
on a man who had been stabbed in
the heart. Williams's other achievements are numerous and
include
serving as surgeon-in-chief of the Freedman's Hospital in Washington,
D.C. from 1883-1898, the first African-American member
of the American College of Surgeons,
and professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in
Nashville Tennessee. Politically, he supported W.E.B. DuBois rather
than Booker
T. Washington. He married Alice D. Johnson in 1898. Williams died
on August 4, 1931. He is buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.
