"Dorothy-Boulding-Ferebell" (October 10,1898-September 14,1980)

Was a tireless advocate for racial equality and women's health care.In 1925 in a derelict section of Capitol Hill,she established Southeast Neighborhood House,to provide health care for impoverished African Americans.She also set up the Southeast Neighborhood Society,with playground and day care for children of  working mamas.At Howard University Medical School,she was appointed director of Heath services.She was founding president of the women's institute,an organization that serves educational,community,government, and non-profit organizations,as well as individual patents.


Dorothy was born in Norfolk,Virginia.Her daddy parents were former slaves.While she was young her family moved north to Boston,Massachusetts,where Dorothy and her brother Ruffin grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Beacon Hill.Her family enriched her childhood,serving as excellent role models.With eight attorneys among them,discussions about law dominated the household.One of Dorothy's uncles,George Lewis Ruffin,was the the first African-American graduate of Harvard Law School and later became Massachusetts's first African American judge."All I heard at the table was your honor,i object,' 'or ' answer the question yes or no.' Yet all my life I wanted to be a doctor."


Since she was a child,Dorothy wanted to help cure the injured While her friends played with toys,she doctored ailing and injured animals,"I would nurse and help the birds that fell out the trees,the dog that lost a fight."


After graduating from English High School.with the highest honor,she attended Simmons College in Boston and decided to apply to medical school and was accepted into Tufts University School of Medicine.She graduated among the top five in her class,she met a blockade of racism when she applied for internship at white hospitals.So Dr.Boulding moved to Washington,D.C.,for an intership at Freemen's Hospital,the precursor to Howard University and one of the few hospitals under African-American administration that provided health care to the African American community.


After completing her internship in 1925,Dr.Boulding opened her own practice in a derelict area of Capitol Hill,without ambulance service.To augment health care in the neighborhood,she persuaded the trustees if the Friendship House,a charitable segregated medical center,to open an adjuct clinic for African Americans.The new facility was named Southeast Neighborhood House.Dorothy also set up the Southeast Neighborhood Society,with playground and day care for children of working mamas.That same year she joined the faculty of Howard University Medical School,the founding president of the philathropoic and educational Women's Institute.


In 1930,Dr.Boulding married Claude Thurston Ferebell,a dentist and instructor at Howard University College of Dentistry.A year after their marriage,they had twins,Claude Jr. & Dorothy.Tragically,their daughter contracted  the flu and died at 18.


The great depression of the 1930s was devastating to the poorest members of society.In 1934 the philanthropic sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha (the first African-American sorority,founded in 1908) sponosored the Mississippi Health Project to bring primary medical care to the rural African American community population across the state of  Mississipp,who struggled to received even the most basic health care.Dr.Ferebell served as medical director of the project which was active for two to six weeks every summer from 1935-1942.Dr.Ferebee,a long-term member of the sorority,was elected President of Alpha Kappa Alpha in 1939.


Through contacts with the United States Public Service,an andorsement by Senator Byron Patton (Pat) Harrison (D-Mississippi),and the State Department of Health at Jackson,Mississippi,the project sent mobile medical units into regions of poverity in the rural South.


Alpha Kappa Alpha members used the Mississippi Health Project to bring federal attention to the needs of African Americans to the rural South.In the face of hostile,intimidating,and suspicious white plantations,owners,project participants launched smallpox and diphtheria immunization programs in ramshackle communities of African American sharecroppers.They also tackled widespread malnutrition and venereal disease.


In 1949 Dr.Ferebell was appointed director of Howard University Medical School's health services,a post she held until 1968.An active member of the National Council of Negro Women,she succeeded her friend Mary McLeod Bethuneas its second president from 1949-1953,and expanded the organization's efforts to elimate discrimination against minorities in housing,health care,education,and the army forces.


In the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the council for food for peace,she toured Africa after five months,lecturing on preventive medicine.Dorothy died in Washington D.C.