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[[image - the words Medical History with the medical symbol of caduceus behind it]]
Susan Smith McKinney, M.D., 1847-1918
First Afro-American Woman Physician In New York State

LESLIE L. ALEXANDER, M.D.,
Brooklyn, New York

Susan Maria Smith was born in 1847 at the corner of Fulton Street and Buffalo Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. This area, now called Weeksville, was then a farm extending south from Fulton Street. Twenty-three years later in July 1870, she was graduated from the New York Medical College for Women and was valedictorian of her class. One hundred and four years later, on September 25, 1974, Brooklyn's Junior High School No. 265 was named the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Junior High School in her honor.

Dr. Susan Smith McKinney was the seventh of ten children of Sylvanus and Anne Springsteel Smith. Her father was a successful and prosperous pig farmer who was listed in the directories of the time as a pork merchant. Her mother was the daughter of a Shinnecock squaw and a Revolutionary War French colonel by marriage. 

Her oldest sister, (Min) Sarah Tompkins was married to an Episcopal minister and became the principal of Grammar School No. 4 in 1864. After the death of her first husband, this sister married the famous Henry Highland Garnet, the noted anti-slavery orator and later Minister to Liberia. She continued to be a school principal (in Manhattan) at public School 80 until her retirement in 1901 after a tenure of 37 years.^1

Another sister, Emma (Thomas) was a school teacher. Clara (Brown) taught piano and Mary was a hairdresser. Two of her brothers died (one at sea) in the Civil War.

As a child Dr. McKinney was a serious student of the organ under the tutelage of two famous organists of New York City, John Zundel of the Plymouth Church, and Henry Eyre Brown of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. This training enabled her to teach in the public school system of Washington, D.C. for two years and later to become, for 28 years, choir director and an accomplished organist of the Bridge Street A.M.E. Church in Brooklyn (during her medical career). 

The first Negro women to receive the medical degree were Rebecca Lee, M.D. (New England Female Medical College, Boston, 1864) and Rebecca J. Cole, M.D. (Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia, 1867).^2 Dr. Susan Smith was the first Negro woman physician in Brooklyn and New York State. She was the third in the United States. She practiced 24 years in Brooklyn— as Dr. Susan Smith from 1870-73, and as Dr. Susan McKinney from 1874-1895. Her office was located at 205 DeKalb Avenue which is not too distant from the 101 Park Avenue site of the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney School and also the Bridge Street A.M.E. Church. She also maintained an office in Manhattan.

[[image - black and white photograph of the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Junior High School]]
[[caption]] The Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Junior High School in Brooklyn, New York. [[/caption]]

Dr. McKinney was a member of the medical staff of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women at 213 West 54th street, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, in Manhattan during 1882. She took postgraduate work at the Long Island Medical College Hospital in Brooklyn from 1887-88. She also was one of the organizers and founders, in 1881, and a member of the staff until 1895, of the Brooklyn Woman's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary at Myrtle and Grand Avenues (near the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney School). This hospital later was renamed the Memorial Hospital for Women and Children, and was relocated at 808 Prospect Place.

Dr. McKinney was a member of the Kings County Medical Society and the New York State Homeopathic Medical Society. She was official physician to the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People and served as a member of its governing board from 1892-1895. This Home is still in operation at the corner of St. Johns Place and Kingston Avenue where a new physical plant is being contemplated.

Dr. McKinney also was a public speaker. On several occasions in Brooklyn and Ohio, she spoke on women in medicine. She addressed the Interracial congress in London, England, in 1911 on Colored Women in America.

Dr. McKinney's kinship can be traced back four generations and forward four generations (Table 1).^3 Her great, great grandmother, Libby Larkins, was a pure Montauk Indian. Her husband also was of that tribe. His name is not recorded. A great grandfather, Solomon Hubbs, was an African slave ship escapee and was said to be an African prince called "King Solomon." His grandson, Sylvanus, later was to marry the half-breed Shinnecock-French girl, Anne Springsteel, the mother of Dr. Susan Smith McKinney. 

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Transcription Notes:
I used ^1 and ^3 to represent in-text footnote markers, I'm not sure if this was the proper way to format it.