Charles B. Purvis
*Charles Burleigh Purvis was born on this date in 1842. He was a Black physician.
Purvis was born in Philadelphia, PA.; his parents were white abolitionists Robert Purvis and Harriet Forten Purvis. Charles was the fifth of eight children and worked as a young man. He attended some public schools, but most of his schooling was with the Quakers. He enrolled at Oberlin College in 1860 and stayed for two years but did not finish. In 1862, he entered the Medical College at Western Reserve in Cleveland.
In 1864, he served in the Union Army as a military nurse during the American Civil War at Camp Barker. He graduated from Western Reserve in March 1865. Two months after graduation, he was an acting assistant surgeon with the rank of first lieutenant and assigned to duty in Washington, DC. He served in this role until 1869.
In Washington, D.C. He was among the founders of the medical school at Howard University. He was the first black physician to attend a sitting president when he attended President James Garfield after an assassin shot him in 1881; he was the first black physician to head a hospital under civilian authority when he was surgeon-in-charge of the Freedmen's Hospital that same year.
He was the first black person to serve on the D. C. Board of Medical Examiners and the second black instructor at an American medical school. He was also a leading activist in civil rights and universal suffrage movements. In 1869, Purvis and Alexander Thomas Augusta were proposed for membership in the Medical Society of DC, a branch of the American Medical Association.
They were considered eligible but did not receive enough votes. Another black physician, A. W. Tucker, was proposed on June 23 but was rejected. In response, these three formed the National Medical Society. Purvis married Ann Hathaway on April 13, 1871. They had two children: Alice, a physician, and Robert, a dentist. From October 1, 1881, to 1894, he was appointed by President Chester Arthur to Surgeon-in-Charge at the Freedmen's Hospital, the first black person to head a hospital under civilian authority. In 1904, Purvis was granted a license to practice in Massachusetts and admitted to the Massachusetts Medical Society, and in 1905, he moved to Boston. Purvis resigned from Howard University Medical School on May 28, 1907. He was appointed professor emeritus on January 21, 1908. In 1908, he was elected a member of the board of trustees and served until his resignation on June 1, 1926.
He was a Mason and, along with his father and many others, was active in feminist movements and calls for universal suffrage. Purvis was criticized for not being thoroughly identified with blacks, having light skin, marrying a white woman, and sending his daughter to white public schools in DC. Charles Burleigh Purvis died in Los Angeles, California, on December 14, 1929.
