"Augustus Nathaniel Lushington" (August 1,1869-1939)

Became the first African American to earn Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M)at the

University of Pennsylvania in 1897.He practiced two years in Philadelphia and worked as an instructor in Veterinary Sanitation and hygiene at Bell Mead Industrial and Agricultural College At Rock Castle,West Virginia.Later,he practiced for much of his career life in very segregated Lynchburg,Virginia,where he experience unfair treatment,Augustus finally earned a reputation as a superior practitioner in the community.He had memberships in the Statistical reporter to the Bureau of Animal Industry,Federal Department Agriculture,and Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce.He was born south Caribbean on the island of Trinidad.As a young child his paternal grandfather from DR Congo,was brought to Trinidad as a slave to work at the sugar plantation on the island,and his father,William,worked as a butcher,who raised produce for sale at market and did farm work.Augustus went to teacher-training school and worked at Trinidadian classrooms for several years,and was promoted to the rank of principal.He left for Venezuela,where he worked as a clerk in the town of La Guayra for a British-owned railroad.After three years,he went back to Trinidad but found that opportunities were insufficient in the island,which were already crowded with successive waves of Indian &Chinese immigrants.Finally,in 1889,he left Trinidad again for the United States,seeking broad and various labor markets.His search lasted three years,he returned to Trinidad and to his family and found labor jobs were scarce due to Indian and Chinese immigrants.He set off for the U.S. Augustus landed in New York where he set off for Binghamton, New York.In 1890 he met his wife Elizabeth Gavino Hubert.His college education started when he married his wife.Her west Indian friends helped him enroll in Cornell University to study Agriculture.Augustus  graduated with a degree in Agriculture in 1894.Since there was no work for him at the time he left the West Indies and left for another education.Augustus started another education.He started another education at the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school.Augustus started the program in three years.When graduated he was the only African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania.When students walk in to the University of Pennsylvania the first thing that they see is a portrait of Augustus.His portrait hangs at the main entrance of the main building.Augustus began his career of being a veterinarian treating farm animals.He did most of his work out of Lynchburg,Virginia,where he would walk miles to treat sick animals in farm country.He set up a veterinary practice in Philadelphia but remained there for only two years.Augustus seems to have been drawn southward,despite the worsening racial climate in southern states,by a teaching job in veterinary sanitation at Bell Mead Industrial Agricultural College in Rock Castle,Virginia.Deciding to return to his veterinary practice,he realized that south-central offered,from a veterinarian's point of view,an ideal environment ,with large numbers of livestock grazing on the area's rolling hills.Finding that there was only one other veterinarian in Lynchburg,Augustus opened his practice there.Since there were not many pets at the time he decided to treat farm animals.The farms were important because at this time,most people could not afford to spend large amounts of money on their ailments.Augustus treated cows,horses,and other livestock,often walking for miles through the woods from Lynchburgh to reach the farms where the services were needed.Augustus experience neither harmonious relationships nor good citizenship.White farmers often availed themselves of his services then refused to pay him-and in the repressive atmosphere of the South in the early 1900s,Augustus had either the option to take legal action nor even the practical right to refuse services.He had his wife had three daughters.One daughter Drucilla Moultrie,taught in Lynchburgh schools for about fifty years.Another daughter,Bernetta Parks,worked for Bennett College in Greensboro,North Carolina.The third daughter is not mentioned enough to find her records.Since pay was little for veterinarian and white people refused to pay him,he decided to take on other responsibilities.He decided he would also became a meat inspector and Probation Officer on Weekends.