Searching for Dr. Harris: The Life and Times of a Remarkable African American Physician (Studies in Social Medicine) - Hardcover

Humphreys, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 146968005X ISBN 13: 9781469680057

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2024

Synopsis

This is the untold story of Dr. J. D. Harris (1833-1884), an African American physician whose life and career straddled enormous changes for Black professionals and the practice of medicine. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Harris served as a contract surgeon to the Union army and transitioned to a similar post under the Freedmen’s Bureau, treating Black troops and freedpeople in Virginia. Margaret Humphreys not only narrates what we know about Harris but offers context to his remarkable journey, including how incredible it was that a young man born into freedom in a slave state learned to read when literacy for Black people was illegal. He was one of very few African Americans to become a doctor before Howard Medical School opened in the 1870s, a fact that both reveals the structural barriers to medical education for Black Americans and highlights how those structures weakened in the 1860s.

Drawing on census records, court records, Civil War and Reconstruction documents from the National Archives, African American newspapers, and more, this book is a revealing look at the history not only of medicine in the southern United States but also of race and citizenship during one of the nation’s most tumultuous eras.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Humphreys is Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University and the author of several books.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 146968005X
• ISBN 13: 9781469680057
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 322