Viewing page 33 of 196

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The Howard University Medical Alumni Association was organized in 1871 by the five graduates of that year: Drs. Danforth B. Nichols, Joseph A. Sladen, L.M. Bowen, William W. Bernitt, and George W. Brooks.

Only graduates of medicine proper were at first admitted to active membership. Later, pharmaceutical graduates were admitted. In 1879, upon the organization of a Union Alumni Association, admitting members of all the departments of the University, the Medical Alumni Association was discontinued and its members made a part of the University Association. In 1883, feeling the necessity of more unity among the medical graduates, the Medical alumni Association was reorganized. By 1886, graduates of all the departments of medicine were admitted on equal terms.

The objectives for which the Association was formed, as outlined in the original constitution, were "... the perpetuation of friendship in our Alma Mater, to keep alive the interest we have in her welfare and to collect and record all things of interest to her history."

Annual meetings were to be held on the day preceding commencement, Sunday excepted. Active membership was limited to graduates of the Medical Department. The professors and other instructors in said department were made ex-officio members. Professors in any department of Howard, as well as graduates of any regular medical school, were admitted as honorary members by vote of the Association.

By resolution, the following was adopted qualifying continued membership: "That any member of this Association who have or may hereafter adopt the practice of any other than the regular school of medicine, his name shall be stricken from the roll."

The Howard University Medical Association was incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1945 by members of the medical Class of 1945. Under the management of part-time medical personnel, but because of the lack of time for proper promotion, it met with rather limited success for the next ten years. In 1955, with funds provided by the Class of 1934, it was reorganized with a lay staff and has increased in service and usefulness to the alumni, the Students, the College of Medicine, and the University.

The coming year (1971) will mark the 100th anniversary of the forming of the Howard University Medical Alumni Association.