Medical Schools

During the Reconstruction Era (1867-77) two premier schools for black medical education opened÷Howard Medical School in Washington,DC, and Meharry Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. Howard was open to all qualified applicants regardless of race or religion, but with the exception of one or two white students over the years, it functioned as an all black school. Meharry served only blacks. Shortly thereafter, five or six other private black medical schools sprang up in the South to supplement Howard and Meharry. All but Howard and Meharry disappeared in the early twentieth century when they were unable to meet rising medical school standards, but not before producing over a thousand physicians. Many of these physicians became licensed and practiced in the black communities of the South.