Dr rebecca cole biography

American physician (1846–1922)

For other uses, see Rebecca Cole (disambiguation).

Rebecca J. Cole (March 16, 1846 – August 14, 1922) was an American physician, organization founder and social reformer.

In 1867, she became the second African-American woman to become a doctor in the United States, after Rebecca Lee Crumpler three years earlier. Throughout her life she faced racial and gender-based barriers to her medical education, training in all-female institutions which were run by the first generation of graduating female physicians.^[1]

Early life and education

Cole was born in Philadelphia on March 16, 1846, one of five children.^[2] Her father was a laborer and her mother was a laundress.^[3] One of her sisters, Sarah Elizabeth Cole, married Henry L.

Phillips, a prominent African American Episcopal priest, c. 1876.^[4]

Cole attended high school at the Institute for Colored Youth where the curricul