Black History month just finished and Women’s History month has begun. Mildred Fay Jefferson is a name not mentioned last month by Black Lives Matter supporters and will probably be missing from any program touting the wonderful deeds performed by women, some against great odds.

As a child, Jefferson would follow the town doctor around in his horse-drawn buggy while he made house calls in the small Texas town of Carthage.

She graduated from the segregated high school at age 15 and earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas College in three years.

She was considered too young to attend medical school so she entered Tufts University and earned a master’s degree in biology. This would make her about 21 years old and it seems she was not prevented from achieving goals because of the color of her skin.

After Tufts, Jefferson went on to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1951 and became a member of the Boston Surgical Society, the first black woman to do so in both areas. That’s quite a first in 1951.

Maybe the reason Dr. Jefferson isn’t used as a model for black girls is because she was a co-founder of the National Right to Life Committee. She traveled the country speaking on the subject. She was often quoted saying “I became a physician in order to save lives, not to destroy them.”

Dr. Jefferson reminded people how Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and the birth control movement, allied these movements with the eugenics belief of suppressing the reproduction of those considered unfit. This included non-whites, the poor and the disabled.

Did Dr. Jefferson’s pro-life work keep her off the Black History month calendar? Let’s see if her name comes up for Women’s History this month.

(Information from BlackPast.org and RelevantRadio.com)

CORLEEN PROULX,

Atlanta