Searching for Dr. Harris
eBook - ePub

Searching for Dr. Harris

The Life and Times of a Remarkable African American Physician

  1. 322 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Searching for Dr. Harris

The Life and Times of a Remarkable African American Physician

About this book

This is the untold story of Dr. J. D. Harris (1833-1884), an African American physician whose life and career straddled enormous changes for Black professionals and the practice of medicine. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Harris served as a contract surgeon to the Union army and transitioned to a similar post under the Freedmen’s Bureau, treating Black troops and freedpeople in Virginia. Margaret Humphreys not only narrates what we know about Harris but offers context to his remarkable journey, including how incredible it was that a young man born into freedom in a slave state learned to read when literacy for Black people was illegal. He was one of very few African Americans to become a doctor before Howard Medical School opened in the 1870s, a fact that both reveals the structural barriers to medical education for Black Americans and highlights how those structures weakened in the 1860s.

Drawing on census records, court records, Civil War and Reconstruction documents from the National Archives, African American newspapers, and more, this book is a revealing look at the history not only of medicine in the southern United States but also of race and citizenship during one of the nation’s most tumultuous eras.

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Yes, you can access Searching for Dr. Harris by Margaret Humphreys in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half Title Page
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Dedication Page
  7. Contents
  8. List of Illustrations
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. INTRODUCTION
  11. 1 The Formative Years
  12. 2 The Migration to Ohio
  13. 3 Poetry and Politics
  14. 4 Revolution in Cleveland, 1858–1859
  15. 5 The Anglo-African Empire
  16. 6 Colonizing the Caribbean
  17. 7 The Great Transition, 1862–1864
  18. 8 Family Ties in Reconstruction, 1864–1869
  19. 9 Medicine and Politics, 1864–1869
  20. 10 Finding a Professional Home
  21. 11 A Roaring Fire, a Fading Light
  22. CONCLUSION
  23. Notes
  24. Bibliography
  25. Index