Diversify General Surgery - Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown

Representation is a huge problem in surgery.  In the interests of remedying this in some small way, we'll be including a biographical piece in Chief Resident’s Weekly Update on a regular basis focusing on a surgeon whose name is not well known in our oral and written history, but should be.

Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown grew up in an orphanage in upstate New York, having been placed there soon after her birth in Philadephia in 1919.  At age 13, her mother reclaimed her, but she continued to run away back to the orphanage, five times, given the volatility of the new home situation with her estranged mother.  She worked as a maid and enrolled in high school at age 15, living with a foster family arranged by her new High School principal.  She graduated at the top of her class in 1937 and received a full scholarship to Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina where she received her B.A. in 1941, graduating second in her class. She enrolled in 1944 at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN, from which she graduated in 1948.  

After interning at Harlem Hospital for a year, she chose surgery.  There were no other black women in general surgery in the American South and she met with almost universal resistance.  She described her program director, Dr. Matthew Walker as brave for accepting her into the program despite advice from his colleagues that a woman could never withstand the rigors of a surgical residency.  She completed a five-year residency at Meharry and George W. Hubbard Hospital to become Assistant Professor of Surgery in 1955, the first black woman to be made a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.  She described her journey thus: "I tried to be ... not hard, but durable."    She was chief of surgery from 1957-1983 at Nashville Riverside Hospital, clinical professor of surgery at Meharry Medical College and educational director for the Riverside-Meharry clinical rotation program.  She also served as a consultant on health and education for the NIH in 1982.   

In her personal life, she also overcame barriers and prejudices to achieve a number of firsts.  She became the first single adoptive mother in Tennessee in 1956 when a poor, unmarried patient implored her to adopt her newborn daughter.  She also ran and won a seat in the state legislature, becoming the first black woman representative in the state legislature of Tennessee in 1966.  She would later resign after the defeat of an expanded abortion rights bill she sponsored - frustrated by the fact that the legislation, had it been approved, would have benefitted many women in the state.    

She was much honored during her lifetime, including the Carnegie Foundation Humanitarian award in 1993 and the prestigious Horatio Alger Award in 1994.  The Residence at Meharry College was renamed in her honor.  Her life and accomplishments, she said could serve as an example to others, "not because I have done so much, but to say to young people that it can be done."   

- Adapted from "Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown," https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_46.html