Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856, and died on August 4, 1931. He was an American surgeon and the founder of a hospital. In 1891, he started Provident Hospital, which was the first hospital in the United States that did not separate patients based on race. He is known for performing the first successful heart surgery. This surgery involved the pericardium, a two-layered, fluid-filled covering that surrounds the heart and the main blood vessels. The pericardium holds the heart in place, protects it from infection and injury, and helps reduce friction during the heart’s constant movement by providing lubrication. In 1913, Williams became the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.

Biography

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. His father, Daniel Williams Jr., was the son of a Scots-Irish woman and a Black barber. His mother, Sarah Price, was a Black American. His great-grandfather was listed in the 1790 U.S. census for Philadelphia as "other free," a term used for Black Americans who were not enslaved.

Williams was the fifth child in his family and lived with his parents, a brother, and five sisters. His family later moved to Annapolis, Maryland. When Williams was nine years old, his father died of tuberculosis. His mother could not care for all the children alone and sent some to live with relatives. Williams became an apprentice to a shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland, but ran away to join his mother, who had moved to Rockford, Illinois. Later, he moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin, where he joined his sister and opened his own barber shop. He then moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, and became interested in the work of a local doctor, deciding to pursue medicine.

He studied under Henry W. Palmer for two years before entering Chicago Medical College, now known as Northwestern University Medical School, in 1880. His education was supported by Mary Jane Richardson Jones, a leader in Chicago’s Black community. He earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern University Medical School in 1883.

After graduating, Williams opened a private medical practice in Chicago, Illinois. From 1885 to 1888, he worked as a demonstrator in anatomy at Northwestern. Later, he became an instructor at the South Side Dispensary, a free clinic.

In 1887, Williams was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health. That same year, he became an attending physician at the Protestant Orphan Asylum, an institution created to help during a cholera outbreak.

In 1891, Williams founded Provident Hospital in Chicago. The hospital provided training for doctors and nurses, especially for African Americans, though its staff and patients were integrated from the start. In 1892, he supported Emma Ann Reynolds, a graduate of Provident’s nursing school, in her application to Northwestern University Woman’s Medical School. Reynolds became the first Black woman to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern in 1895.

In 1893, Williams performed the first successful pericardium surgery to repair a wound caused by a knife. This surgery was done without penicillin or blood transfusions at Provident Hospital in Chicago. The surgery was not reported until 1897. He later performed a second procedure to drain fluid. About 50 days after the first surgery, the patient, James Cornish, left the hospital.

In 1893, during President Grover Cleveland’s administration, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., a position he held until 1898. That year, he married Alice Johnson, who was born in Chicago and graduated from Howard University. They moved back to Chicago. In addition to founding Provident Hospital, Williams established a training school for African-American nurses there. In 1897, he joined the Illinois Department of Public Health to improve medical and hospital standards.

Williams was a professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked to create more hospitals that admitted African Americans. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association for African-American doctors. In 1913, he became a charter member and the only African-American doctor in the American College of Surgeons.

Williams’ wife, Alice Johnson, died in 1924. He passed away in 1931 at the age of 75 in Idlewild, Michigan, from a stroke. His funeral took place at St. Anselm Catholic Church in Chicago, and there is debate about how many people attended the service.

Personal life

Williams married Alice Johnson in 1898. Alice was the biological daughter of Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Jewish-American sculptor, and a woman of mixed race. Williams lived in Idlewild, Michigan, a community with a large African American population during his retirement.

Williams was baptized into the Catholic Church by Father Joseph Eckert, SVD while he was dying. In his will, he left $2,500 (equivalent to $44,686 in 2021) to St. Elizabeth's Church in Chicago. Williams was buried at Graceland Cemetery, located in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

Legacy and impact

In the 1890s, several efforts were made to improve heart surgery. On September 6, 1891, Henry C. Dalton of Saint Louis, Missouri, performed the first successful operation to repair the heart's protective covering in the United States. On September 4, 1895, Norwegian surgeon Axel Cappelen completed the first successful surgery on the heart itself at Rikshospitalet in Kristiania, which is now known as Oslo. On September 7, 1896, Ludwig Rehn of Frankfurt, Germany, successfully repaired a stab wound to the right ventricle of the heart without any complications. Although these advances occurred, heart surgery was not widely accepted in medical science until World War II. During the war, surgeons had to improve their techniques to treat severe injuries. Later, Dalton and Williams were recognized for their contributions to the development of cardiac surgery.

Honors

Daniel Hale Williams was given special degrees by Howard and Wilberforce Universities. He was one of the first members of the American College of Surgeons and belonged to the Chicago Surgical Society.

• A Pennsylvania State Historical Marker was placed at U.S. Route 22 eastbound (Blair St., 300 block), Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember his achievements and mark where he grew up.
• His home in Chicago is now called the Daniel Hale Williams House and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
• His retirement home in Idlewild received a historical marker from the state of Michigan in 2008.
• Several schools are named after him, including the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine in Chicago; Daniel Hale Williams Elementary in Gary, Indiana; P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams in Brooklyn; and M.S. 180 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in the Bronx.
• Williams Park in Chicago is also named after him.

Representation in other media

• The Stevie Wonder song "Black Man" celebrates the accomplishments of Williams, along with others.
• Tim Reid portrays Williams in the TV series Sister, Sister, season 5, episode 18, titled "I Have a Dream," which aired on February 25, 1998.
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Daniel Hale Williams in his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
• His life, along with Ulysses Grant Dailey, is retold in the 1948 radio drama The Heart of George Cotton, presented by Destination Freedom.
• The Kendrick Lamar song "Prayer" mentions Dr. Daniel Hale Williams' historic achievement as the first person to successfully perform open-heart surgery.