"Eliza Ann Grier" (1864-1902)

Was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state of

Georgia.Born in slavery.Little is known about her life.Eliza was born doing the Civil War (1861-65),in Mecklenburg County,North Carolina,to Emily & Georgia Washington Grier.In 1883 nearly twenty years after emancipation,Eliza entered Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee with the goal of becoming a teacher.She earned a degree in education from Fisk eight years later in 1891 because she took every other year off to pick cotton and perform other work to earn her tuition to continue her studies.Shortly before graduating graduating from Fisk,Eliza decided she wanted to be a medical doctor.She wrote to the dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania requesting information about tuition and the possibility of pursuing advanced medical education.Eliza indicated that she wish to become a medical doctor because she benefit her race more as a physician than as a teacher.She hoped for both admission and financial assistance.The College admitted her but did not provide any provide any help,prompting her to revert to the strategy she employed at Fisk,alternately working and turning for eight years until she completed her medical degree.After graduating from Fisk she moved to Augusta,Georgia,where she taught at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute,founded by Lucy Craft Lanely.Soon after arriving at Haines,Eliza was accepted into the Woman's Medical College in Pennsylvania (later part of Drexel University College of Medicine),where she began her studies in 1893.Once again,she worked to support her educational pursuits and persevered through financial hardships.When Eliza graduated in 1897,she was one of a small but growing number of African American female physicians in the U.S..Later that year,she made national news when she became the first African American woman to apply for and be granted a license to practice in Georgia.Eliza and other African Americans physicians of this era,including Atlanta physician & pharmacist Henry Rutherford Butler,were confronted with a system of segregation and Jim Crow laws.In response,they built hospitals,formed societies,and educational institutions to support themselves as well as their communities.Eliza,despite overwhelming difficulties,remained determined and engaged in opportunities to improve health and hygiene standards for African Americans in the rural south.She lived in Atlanta and in Greenville South Carolina,during the four years after graduating from medical school and struggled to build a private practice.She also supplemented her income with teaching and maintained connections to the hospital and training school for nurses in Charleston,South Carolina.In 1901 Eliza was among the 200 attendees of the Tuskegee Negro Conference,which included such nationally recognized leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois.Around this time she relocated to Albany Georgia,where her brother Dr.R.E. Grier also practice medicine.Eliza is buried in Charlotte North Carolina.