Susan Maria Smith was born in Brooklyn's Weeksville community, the seventh of ten children of prosperous, multi-racial parents, and paid her way through medical school with wages earned as a teacher. In 1870, just five years after the Thirteenth Amendment, she graduated valedictorian from the New York Medical College for Women — becoming the first African American woman physician in New York State and only the third in the entire country.
She ran a thriving Brooklyn practice from 1870 to 1895, specialising in homeopathic treatment for women and children, and co-founded what became the Memorial Hospital for Women and Children. She remained active in medical societies, suffrage and abolitionist circles throughout her career.
In her later years she served as resident physician and faculty member at Wilberforce University in Ohio, teaching health and nutrition. W. E. B. Du Bois delivered the eulogy at her funeral in 1918.
- First African American woman physician in New York State
- Third African American woman physician in the United States
- Co-founder of the Women's Hospital and Dispensary, Brooklyn
- Faculty member and resident physician, Wilberforce University
- Fund your own path when no scholarship exists for you yet.. She worked as a teacher for years to pay her own way through medical school.
- Excellence quietly demonstrated can outlast the doubt that greeted it.. Her Brooklyn practice grew for 25 years on reputation alone.
- Build the institution that outlives your own practice.. Her hospital and namesake medical society continue today.