Rebecca J. Cole was born in Philadelphia in 1846 and educated at the city's Institute for Colored Youth. In 1867 she graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania under Dr. Ann Preston, becoming the second African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, three years after Rebecca Lee Crumpler.
She trained under Elizabeth Blackwell at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, working as a "sanitary visitor" who taught hygiene and maternal care door-to-door in poor neighbourhoods — one of the earliest public-health outreach programmes in the country.
In 1873 she co-founded Philadelphia's Women's Directory Center, offering free legal and medical services to women and children, and she went on to practise medicine for over fifty years, publicly defending Black communities against unfounded claims about disease and hygiene.
- Second African American woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S.
- Pioneer of community public-health outreach in American medicine
- Co-founder of the Women's Directory Center, Philadelphia
- Practised medicine for over 50 years across four states
- Meet exclusion by building your own institutions.. She trained in all-female medical colleges when mainstream schools shut their doors.
- Take your expertise directly to the community that needs it.. She spent years as a door-to-door sanitary visitor in poor neighbourhoods.
- Defend your people's dignity publicly, even against celebrated critics.. She rebutted W. E. B. Du Bois's claims about Black hygiene in print.