Matilda Arabella Evans
Matilda Arabella Evans (1866–1935) was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina. Evans’s survey of Black schoolchildren’s health in Columbia, South Carolina, served as the basis for a permanent examination program within the South Carolina public school system. She also founded the Columbia Clinic Association, which provided health services and health education to families. She extended the program when she established the Negro Health Association of South Carolina to educate families throughout the state on proper health care procedures.
Born in Aiken, South Carolina, Evans was educated at Oberlin College (1887–1991) and the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (M.D., 1897). She practiced obstetrics, gynecology, and surgery, and cared for patients in her own home until she established the Taylor Lane Hospital (the first Black hospital in the city of Columbia) in 1901. She built a large clientele of both Black and white patients, including many affluent white women, whose fees allowed her to provide free care to poor Black women and children. Evans founded a weekly newspaper, The Negro Health Journal of South Carolina, and offered a program of recreational activities for underprivileged boys. She also founded the Good Health Association of South Carolina to help convince people that they could improve their own health by following sound health practices and safe sanitary habits.
After a fire destroyed her first hospital, Evans established St. Luke’s Hospital and Training School for Nurses, which she directed until 1918. Today St. Luke’s School of Nursing is the nation’s oldest hospital-based, diploma school in continuous operation. In 1922, Dr. Evans was elected president of the Palmetto State Medical Society, the only Black woman in the United States to serve as head of a state medical association, and as vice president of the National Medical Association. In World War I, she was appointed to the Volunteer Medical Service Corps. Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia has established an award in her honor.