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DR. MATILDA ARABELLE EVANS

Born in Aiken County, South Carolina, in 1875, and the eldest of three children of Andrew and Harriett Evans, Matilda Arabelle Evans was graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, the only African American in her class.

Following her graduation in 1897, she moved to Columbia and started her illustrious career as a physician and surgeon. In 1901, she established the first hospital for African Americans in Columbia, the Taylor Lane Hospital and Training School for Nurses. When it was destroyed by fire, she started another hospital, St. Luke's Hospital.

Eventually she started a public health journal for the African community of South Carolina, The Good Health Journal, advocating the importance of good health practices and sanitation. In addition, she served as trustee of a junior college in Augusta, worked tirelessly for her church, and created the Columbia Clinic. This clinic soon became known as the Evans Clinic and in the early 1930's, provided free school examinations and vaccinations for thousands of poor African American children in the Columbia area.

An industrious and compassionate woman, Dr. Evans reared eleven children including eight of her nieces and nephews, as well as owned and operated a twenty-acre farm where she raised food for her hospitals, family, and patients. She had a swimming pool on the grounds and taught herself to swim so that she could teach hundreds of African American children to swim. This farm provided entertainment for Columbia area children who ordinarily would have been excluded from similar enjoyments. When she died on November 17, 1935, she was mourned by thousands of people - all of whom were touched by the strength of her spirit. As a distinguished humanitarian, we should keep her memory vivid so that she will never die.

CAREERS IN ONCOLOGY SYMPOSIUM

The TRUMPETER GALA steering committee proudly sponsored the first "Careers in Oncology" seminar for selected high school and middle school students of Thursday, April 1, 1993.

The seminar was held to enlighten and encourage African American youth to develop an interest in and a commitment to healthcare professions in oncology. Further emphasis was placed on cancer and its effect on the African American community, as well as the benefits of education and prevention of cancer.

African American youth were targeted for the seminar because although cancer knows no boundaries, African American statistics are alarming. Since 1960, cancer death rates have risen fifty-one percent in black men and ten percent in black women, as compared to seventeen percent in white men and two percent in white women.

Received extremely well, the program offered the sixty-eight students in attendance an opportunity to attend seminars led predominately by African American role models in the healthcare field. The professions represented included: medicine, nursing, pharmacy, laboratory, physical therapy, social work, nutrition, environmental health, and healthcare administration.

The first participants are with us for the Gala performance tonight.