Sophie B. Jones

Sophia Bethena Jones (1857–1932) was born in Chatham, Canada. She and her five siblings, including Anna H. Jones were the children of Emily Francis and James Monroe Jones. Her father was one of the first black graduates of Oberlin College, finishing in 1849. His father had bought his family out of slavery and moved them to Oberlin OH. All his sons (some formerly enslaved) attended college, a remarkable achievement. James moved his family to Canada to avoid risk of re-enslavement. He was determined that his daughters go to college, and they did. All four became teachers; Sophia also became a doctor.

Since Canada had separate schools for Black students (the last one closed in 1965), Sophia received her early education in a school for Black students. She then attended Wilberforce Collegiate Institute, which was designed specifically to prepare students from segregated schools to enter an integrated university.

She was accepted at the University of Toronto 1879 (an achievement in itself). Sophia decided she wanted to be a doctor. She was denied entry to the University of Toronto’s medical school because she was Black. She taught school for a year and then emigrated to the US and applied to the University of Michigan’s Medical School. In 1885 she became its first African American female to graduate with a medical degree. In time the school would name a Lectureship in infectious diseases and conference facilities for her and a scholarship fund for her and a Black male colleague.

She taught about and practiced medicine and did pioneering work in public health for nearly four decades.

In 1885 she became the first Black female faculty at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia where she created the first training school for nurses in the South. She taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio and was its resident physician. She practiced at Frederick Douglass Hospital, the first Philadelphia hospital with a training school for Black nurses. She was the resident physician of what became the University of North Carolina. She had a medical practice in Kansas City Missouri, where she lived with her sister Anna on Montgall Avenue, enduring racial bombings in her neighborhood.

In 1913 her article, “Fifty Years of Negro Public Health”, was published in “The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science”, whose contributors were considered leading experts and scholars. It was one of the first research publications by a Black female doctor in the field of medicine. Its author is listed as “S.B. Jones, M.D.”, disguising that it was written by a woman.

In 1919, with her health fragile, she moved to Monrovia and lived with her siblings Anna, Emily and George and his family at the family home at 1301 S. Shamrock. There she spent the rest of her life, passing away in 1932 after a lifetime of breaking barriers in medicine.