3-089-454 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A. M. Custis [sic], A. M., M.D.; Surgeon-in-Chief Freedmen's Hospital, 1902. African-American doctor Austin Maurice Curtis (1868-1939) was the first Black physician to receive a staff appointment at a de facto white hospital when he was brought on as an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in 1896. Curtis led Freedmen's for four years, later stepping down to focus on his private practice and his faculty position at Howard University Medical School (Freedmen's was the teaching hospital for Howard). He rose in the ranks at Howard becoming the first Black chair and fourth chair ever of the Department of Surgery in 1928. Curtis held this position for eight years, steering the department through the worst of the Great Depression.