Sarah Loguen Fraser (January 29, 1850 – April 9, 1933) was the first woman to earn a medical degree from Syracuse University, in 1876, and the fourth African American woman to become a licensed physician in the United States. When she moved to the Dominican Republic with her husband, a pharmacist, she was that country's first female doctor.
As the story goes, her decision to pursue a career in medicine began on a fateful day in 1872 when she witnessed a terrible accident, and her inability to help. She'd been waiting for a train when she heard a scream. A cart loaded with goods had rolled over the leg of a small boy, pinning him underneath. She ran to his side, calling out for a doctor, but one never arrived.
She was in shock, and as she boarded her train she was mumbling about becoming a doctor herself. As it turns out, when she was finally able to notice the world around her again, she saw in the seat across from hers her own family's doctor. He agreed to mentor her, and the very next year she enrolled in Syracuse University's medical program -- one of four women in a class of 17, and the only African American.
When compared to the lives of the average woman of the era, and especially the average African American woman, Sarah Loguen determination to become a doctor would be exceptional. But considering her remarkable background, it may have been a natural, if still somewhat difficult and ambitious, course of action.
Her father, Jermain Wesley Loguen, had been born into slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, the son of a female slave -- who herself had been born free and kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child -- and the white master. At the age of 21, he rode his master's mare off the plantation and followed the Underground Railroad to freedom. After studying at the Oneida Institute, he eventually settled in Syracuse, New York, where he became a preacher and teacher in the flourishing black community there. He married the daughter of abolitionists, and together they raised a family and worked to address the needs of their community. One of the most important services they offered was to turn their home into a stop along the Underground Railroad, taking in over 1500 escaped slaves. The Loguen family was good friends with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, among others prominent abolitionists. Her father was so well-known and well-respected with in the abolitionist movement for his work helping escaped slaves, he was referred to as the "King of the Underground Railroad."
So it shouldn't be much of a surprise to learn that their children, who grew up in a home that often harbored fugitive slaves, and with a father who was himself a former slave who often met with other escaped slaves now serving as leaders in the anti-slavery movement, went on to do great things to improve the lives of African Americans. For Sarah, medicine may have simply been an extension of the times she worked alongside her mother and local Native American women as they tended to the injuries and illnesses of those they harbored.
Perhaps this kind of greatness was to be expected from Sarah and her siblings. When she graduated in 1876, she was the first African American woman to earn a medical degree from Syracuse, and only the fourth to become a doctor in the entire country. In fact, until this point, all other women doctors had graduated from women's only institutions. Sarah was the first to attend a co-ed program. She interned at the Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she studied pediatrics, and later at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston -- two of the leading teaching hospitals for women in medicine during this era.
Once she was ready to hang out her own shingle, she moved to Washington, DC, to care for the growing African American community there. Although technically she didn't actually hang her own shingle -- Frederick Douglass did the honors. It was through the Douglass family that she was introduced to the man who would eventually become her husband, Dr. Charles Fraser, a chemist who ran a pharmacy in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. When she moved there, she became the country's first female doctor, where she offered free treatment to poor women and children, earning the nickname "Miss Doc."
When she returned to the United States after her husband's death in 1894, she was shocked to find that things had changed so dramatically after the end of Reconstruction. Laws and policies put into place during Reconstruction had opened doors for African Americans, creating opportunities in society and politics. Its abrupt end meant a return to discrimination and segregation. Sarah, unable to open a private practice, and no longer able to enroll her daughter Gregoria in the school of her choice, decided to move to Paris for a few years. When Gregoria was old enough to attend college, the two moved back to Syracuse, where Gregoria enrolled in Syracuse University, and Sarah practiced pediatric medicine and trained midwives out of her home.
She continued to practice medicine throughout the rest of her life, although with more and more obstacles placed in front of her as time went on. Regardless, she continued to use her skills to serve women and children in the African American community.
For more reading:
Upstate Medical University in Syracuse's brochure: "Dr. Sarah Loguen's Dominican Republic"
Journal of the National Medical Association biography, published in 2000: "Sarah Loguen Fraser, MD (1850 to 1933): the fourth African-American woman physician"
Hobart and William Smith Colleges student project from 2012: "Celebrating the Life of Sarah Loguen Fraser"
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