James McCune Smith: First Black American to Hold Medical Degree

Dr. James McCune Smith, who earned his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1837 after being denied entry to American medical schools, ran a successful pharmacy and medical practice in New York through the 1850s. He wrote major statistical refutations of pro-slavery pseudoscience, including a methodological demolition of John C. Calhoun's census fraud that claimed free Black people were more prone to insanity. He was the first Black American with a university medical degree.