"Dr. Matilda Arabella Evans" {May 13 1872-November 17 1935}

The first woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina. At the outset of the Great

Depression in 193,Dr. Matilda Arabella Evans launched a free-clinic movement that inspired the Columbia,South Carolina,black community to demand health care citizenship rights, even as the state became less inclined to adopt any progressive reform that would improve the material conditions of black lives. Dr.Evans, however, insisted that health care was a citizenship right that was every bit a state responsibility, as was public school education. Matilda was the eldest of three children born to Anderson and Harriet Evans in Aiken County, South Carolina.She came to age during the tumultuous post-Reconstruction era. The New South held scant opportunities for social class mobility, higher education, and professional careers for black women. But she was more fortunate than most.Matilda was one of of the few desperately poor black women who managed to escape the life long consignment to domestic drudgery and agricultural peonage.Her industriousness as a young girl attracted the attention of Martha Scholfield, a white teacher from Pennsylvania whose life,Matilda intoned "forms a tribute to the efficiency of women... that is seldom ever equaled by other human beings claiming greater strength by reason of sex." Martha, impressed by Matilda diligence and intelligence,helped her secure funds which to attend Oberlin College in Ohio.After she graduated in 1892,Matilda taught for one year at Haines Institute, founded by Lucy Laney in Augusta,Georgia. In 1893, she returned to Aiken South Carolina,to assist Martha.Matilda decided to pursue medical training. Martha facilitated her entry into Philadelphia's Women's Medical College in 1893. After she received her medical degree in 1897,Matilda returned to her native South Carolina.In her practice,she specialized in the areas, of surgery,obsterics, gynecology, pediatrics, and hygienics.Matilda quickly attracted an interracial clientele. But her paramount concern was the survival of black children. In her opinion "suffering humanity." Wealthy white women found a safe heaven in this black woman medical practice. Their patronage not only provided her much needed cash income but also imparted a measure of protection and prestiege.She repaid them with her expertise and discretion. Most significantly,the money white women patients paid her enable Matilda to treat poor black women and children for free.This was no small accomplishment in turn-of-the century South Carolina.Her successful negotiations across boundaries of white and black, rick and poor, and women,professionals and lay were essential to the viability of her social reform advocacy.Prior to opening Taylor Lane Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1901,Matilda treated patients in their homes or own. When a fire destroyed Taylor Lane,she opened a fourteen-room, twenty-bed facility,ST. Luke's Hospital and Training School for Nurses, which she operated until 1918. Laudatory stories of her early professional endeavors appeared in both white and black newspapers, replete with testimonials from "the best men in the profession." who commended Evan's "ability as a surgeon and a physician."The black newspaper The Palmetto Leader exuted that "the State of South Carolina  has not produced,within, our group, a citizen more meritoriously outstanding." An artice in the white newspaper The State praised the black woman doctor whose "devotion to her work and earnest Christian character are both unquestioned."