Black Doctor Cover Front Cover
Author:
Christopher L Webber
Published:
December 3rd, 2024
ISBN:
1958870234
Price:
$ 24
Cover:
Paperback
Subjects:
Biography
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Dr. James McCune Smith was more than just a pioneer.

Born in slavery in New York City when slavery was still legal there, James McCune Smith managed to get a good elementary education in a Quaker school but was turned down by colleges because he was Black. Seeing his ability, his pastor raised funds to send him to Scotland where in five years he earned a BA, MA, and MD with honors. He returned to New York

with better training than most American doctors and established a practice serving Black and white alike. Smith took a leading role in the abolition movement, working closely with Frederick Douglass and writing a regular column for Douglass’s paper. James McCune Smith formed a rare Black-white friendship with Gerrit Smith, a wealthy white landowner in upstate

New York; when Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and others formed a Radical Abolition Party to work to abolish slavery, McCune Smith served as chair of the party’s convention-the first time a Black American had chaired a national convention. One of the most important voices in the pre-Civil War abolition movement, this biography brings him to vibrant life as a key figure in American history.

 

The Author


Christopher L Webber

Christopher L. Webber is a priest of the Episcopal Church who has served parishes in Brooklyn and Long Island, Tokyo, Japan, and Bronxville, New York. In retirement he served parishes in the northwest corner of Connecticut. He grew up in Cuba, New York, a small town in the western part of the state, and graduated from Princeton University before earning two theological degrees and an honorary degree from the General Theological Seminary in New York. Webber’s writing career began late in his ministerial life when he was asked to write A Vestry Handbook, which is still in print fortyyears later; his subsequent books are wideranging, from hymnals, church guidebooks, and collections of prayers, to The Beowulf Trilogyand American to the Backbone, a biography of James W.C. Pennington, a fugitive slave who became a leading figure in the pre-Civil Warabolition movement. His wife, Margaret Rose, died just short of their 60th anniversary. Webber has four children and four grandchildren and lives in San Francisco.