"Charles-Victor-Roman"(July 4,1864-August 25,1934)

He was born in Williamsport,Pennsylvania,the son of James William Roman,a canal-boat owner,and Anne Walker McGuin,the daughter of a fugitive slave.He spent much of his childhood in Ontario.A knee injury resulted the amputation of his right leg.He graduated from Hamilton Collegiate Institute in Ontario in 1886 entered Meharry

Medical College in Nashville,Tennessee.Before entering Meharry ,Charles taught

briefly in the public schools of Trigg County,Kentucky,and in Tennessee.Charles graduated from Meharry in 1890,and received a Master of Arts in philosophy and history at Fisk University in Nashville.

He receive postgraduate education at the Medical School of Chicago in 1899 and at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital and Central London Nose,Throat,and Ear Hospital in England in 1904.Paul Quinn College in Waco,Texas,gave him honorary doctorates in 1904 as did Wilberforce University in Ohio,in 1911.From 1890-1893,he practiced medicine,in Clarksville Tennessee.He practiced in Dallas from 1893-1904,when he became an instructor in eye,ear,nose,and throat diseases at Meharry,where he remained for the rest of his life.Charles taught medical history and ethics and became professor emeritus in 1931.He served as a special lecturer in philosophy at what is now Tennessee State University at Nashville headed the Department of Health at Fisk University.

During World War I,Charles was a medical lecturer for the United States Army.He served as the fifth president of the National Medical Association from 1904-1905,and edited its publication,the Journal of the National Medical Association,from 1909 until 1919.He worked as an associate editor of the National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race in 1919 and was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,the Southern Sociological Congress,the Oddd Fellows,the Knights of Phythias,and the African Methodist Church,which he assisted as a lay leader.

Charles authored a number of books and articles,including "Knowledge of History are Conductive to Racial Solidarity" (1911),Science and Christian Ethnics" (1913),"American Civilization and the Negro" (1916), and :Meharry Medical College:A History." His address "Racial Self-Respect and Racial Antagonism," delivered before the Southern Sociological Congress at Atlanta in 1913,received widespread commendation in publications concerned with racial relations.

Through authored, Charles urged Africans-Americans to support African American churches,retail establishments,medical facilities,banks,and schools.He criticized racial prejudice,stressed the contributions of African Americans to America Civilization,and maintained that "racial solidarity and not amalgamation is the the desired and desirable goal of the American Negro."Charles married Margaret Lee Voorchees of Columbia,Tennessee,in 1891.

The first African American physician to receive training in both ophthalmology and otolaryngology,Charles died of a heart attack in Nashville.He is buried at the Greenville Cemetery in that city.