Muriel Majorie Petioni {Janary 1 1914}

 Physician,pioneer in substance abuse treatment.The long and distinguished career of the Trinidadian-born Harlem physician Muriel exemplifies the multiplicity of influences on a generation of talented Afro-Caribbean immigrant women who emerged in the mid-twentieth century.Muriel the daughter of the prominent anti colonial activist and physician Charles Augustin Petioni,grew up in African American as well as Caribbean communities and began a career typical of black female professionals during the era of Jim Crow. In the 1940s she held a series of positions as a physician in historically black colleges in the Midwestern and southern United States.After her father's death in 1950,she returned to Harlem and established her community and holistic-oriented practice in his office at 114 West 131st Street. While she drew on influence and contacts,Muriel pursued her own approach to medical services in Harlem.Among her notable contributions are her pioneering work in substance abuse treatment and the organization of black women physicians.In 1004,at the age of ninety, Muriel remained active as head of a $1 million endowment fund she established for Harlem Hospital.The daughter of Rose Alling and Charles Petioni, Muriel immigrated to New York with her family in 1919.She entered accelerated program at Howard University where she graduated with a BS in 1934 and was the only black woman in her medical class in 1937.In 1939 she completed her internship at Harlem Hospital,one of the few hospitals admitting black interns to its training program,and then completed her residency at the black operated Homer Phillips Hospital in St.Louis,Missouri.In 1942 Muriel married Mallalieu S.Woofolk,a lawyer;and they had one son,Charles M. Woolfolk, a New York business executive.Her marriage broke up in the 1970s,but much of her career she balanced the roles of physician,wife mother;daughter;and community leader.Muriel grew up helping her father in his medical office and listening to political discussions and debates in the family brownstone,which doubled as her father's office.Harlem intellectuals and radical thinkers were frequent guests.Before immigrating to New York,Muriel father had been fired from his job as a newspaper reporter in Port-of -Spain,Trinidad,for criticizing the colonial government.She recalled that her father vowed to establish his own independent occupation so that he would always be in a position to express his political views without  fear of losing his job.Charles worked as an elevator operator,a porter,and a stock clerk in while attending college and medical school.Her mother,who had been a department store clerk in Trinidad,organized the family's resources while employed as a garment worker in a New York sweatshop.They both experienced temporary downward mobility,the family eventually joined the African American professional class while maintaining vast networks in the Caribbean immigrant community in New York and Trinidad.From the vantage point of their own struggle to gain economic independence, they encouraged their daughter's  entry into the relatively small black female professional class and fostered a community to social change and activism.Acknowledging her family's influence,Muriel said in a 1993 interview,"My whole orientation was fighting for the rights of black people in Harlem."Muriel more than fifty-year medical career bridges the era of Jim Crow medical training and the period of desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s.When she entered medical school in the 1930s,black female representation in the profession had already declined from a generation before.The census identified only sixty-five black practicing physicians in 1920.The historian Darlene Clark Hines suggests that instead of entering the medical profession as physicians,many career-aspiring black found nursing a more feasible alternative career in the health field at that time. Like most black men, the women who were in practice were excluded from medical and surgical specialties.Years of segregated and male-dominated medicine in the North as well as the South meant women faced severe obstacles in both training and practice.Muriel held a series of appointments in historically black colleges and universities at Wilberforce University in Ohio,Alabama Teachers College,Bennett College,and Hampton University in Virginia before she began her practice.Darlene points out that many women found the cost and emotional strain of establishing a successful private practice prohibitive at first.The college appointments "provided small but steady stipends and much-needed experience at working in an institutional setting." In additional,the appointments assured some professional autonomy,status, and visibility in the profession.Muriel credited her southern and Midwestern experience as important to her understanding of the politics of segregation and as contributing to her expanding political consciousness.After a decade as a college physician,Muriel returned to New York in 1950 and set up her practice in her father's office.She recalled in those days "many black patients did not want to come to a black physician.People still felt white physicians were better physicians." Regarding such these matters,Darlene wrote,"The newly minted black woman doctor frequently spent considerable effort persuading,cajoling,and winning confidence before being allowed to treat physical illness." She cited May Chinn,the first black woman graduate of the University of Bellevue Medical Center in New York in 1892,who recalled both the skepticism of black patients and "support"of black male colleagues who "sent me their night calls after midnight."In the face of these and other challenges.,Muriel nevertheless provided direct outreach to the most disadvantaged members of her community and attempted to address the specific concerns of black female physicians.In her Harlem practice,she soon saw the social and economic realities that affected her patients.Many could not afford the two or three she charged for an office visit or a house call, and so they sometimes paid with food. In the 1960s she began an innovative drug treatment program,and at the end of the decade she became Muriel became the first medical director of Harlem Drug Fighters,a short-term community-operated detoxification until based at Harlem Hospital.She also performed free medical screening for addicts as part of a program sponsored by the New York Council of Small Churches.The City of New York honored her for her work in the treatment of drug addiction in 1983. Muriel also became an activist for children's health while serving as a school physician in the Department of Health between 1950 and 1980.During the 1970s, she earned a national reputation as a pioneer activists for black women physicians.In 1974 she started of the first organizations of black women doctors,the New York-area Susan Smith McKinney Steward Medical Society,named for the prominent nineteeth-century Brooklyn physician.She continued as its first president until 1984.The organization functioned as a support network for area women physicians, organized medical seminars for its members,established a mentoring program for young women interested in medicine, and documented medical contributions of black doctors.In 1977 Muriel organized black women physicians nationally  in Medical Women of the of the Nationally Medical Association.It was the first female physician's group admitted officially as a component of the the Black National Medical Association formed in 1895.In 1988 she established Friends of Harlem Hospital,a $1.7million endowment fund.The fund enabled the hospital to purchase critical equipment,expand treatment facilities,and provide needed services for patients.She retired as a practicing physician in 1990,Muriel kept up a five-day-a-week schedule for sixteen years at her small Harlem Hospital office.