FROM COTTON FIELDS TO MEDICINE

About the Book

At the age of forty-four, my mother set out to accomplish what no other American woman of color had achieved at her age-to graduate and receive a Doctorate of Medicine and Surgery from the Universite Lobre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She walked two and a half miles daily from the cotton fields to a one-room school that housed grades one through seven taught by one teacher. But it was her thirst of knowledge that would sustain her and carry her to a great adventure across the Atlantic. We hope that the content of these pages will inspire many other young persons to strive and become whatever they wish to become, overcoming any obstacles and defying all odds.

About the Author

Dr. Hazel Coley-Greene was born in 1908, the fifth child of eleven, of tenant farmers in rural North Carolina, and therefore her prospects for education were not encouraging. She began her studies at the age of six in a one-room wooden schoolhouse two and one half miles from home, a journey made by foot come rain or shine. She entered high school at the age of sixteen and graduated from Shaw University eight years later. After a teaching career, marrying, and motherhood, she decided to study medicine; she had been out of school twenty years. She enrolled in medical school, faced hostile male professors, much younger classmates, illness, and many obstacles, but received medical degree in 1960. She became New York board certified in 1966 and practiced for several years at Harlem and Beth Abraham Hospitals.