Dr.Hallie Tanner Dillon Johnson"(1864-1901)

In 1891 became the first African American female doctor in Alabama.She was born Hallie Tanner in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania,the oldest daughter of nine children to Benjamin Tucker and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner.She was well educated as a young girl became familiar with the work of prominent African-American intellectuals.She worked with her father on the Christian Recorder,a publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,where he ministered.Around the time of her graduation,African-American educator Booker T. Washington,founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama,had written to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania to request a nomination for a teaching position he had been struggling to fill for four years.He hoped to find an African-American physician to serve the school and its surrounding community.Hallie accepted his offer of $600 a month,including lodging and meals,and arrived to begin her service in August 1891.In 1886 she married Charles Dillon,and the couple had a child before her husband's sudden death.A widow at 24,she returned to live with her family and decided to enter medical school.After three years of study at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania,she earned her M.D. in 1891,graduating  with honors.Before beginning her new job,how ever young Dr. Dillon had to face a significant obstacle;passing the Alabama State Medical Examination.The very fact that he she was sitting for the examination caused a public stir in Montgomery,Alabama.Hallie spent ten days taking the exam,addressing a different area of medicine each day.Her examiners included the directors and leading figures of most of the state's major medical institutions.She impressed them with her responses and she passed the test.Dr.Dillon was the first woman to practice medicine in the state of Alabama.During her brief tenure at Tuskegee she was responsible for the health care of the school's 450 students and 30 faculty and staff.She also established a training school for nurses and founded the Lafayette Dispensary to serve the health care needs of local residents,often mixing medicines herself for their use.She also taught two classes each day.Her tenure ended at Tuskegee in 1894 when she married Rev.John Quincy Johnson,an African Methodist Episcopal minister and math instructor at Tuskegee.The couple moved first to Columbia South Carolina,where Rev.Johnson became president of Allen University a private school for black students.They later moved Hartford Connecticut to Atlanta Georgia,and then to Princeton New Jersey,as Rev.Johnson pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in theology.Finally,in 1900 the couple settled in Nashville,Tennessee with their three children,and Rev Johnson became the pastor of Saint Paul A.M.E. Church.Dr. Johnson died in Nashville from complications during childbirth.