“Most of All, I Wanted My Life to Count for Something:” Toward Black Feminist Theorization in Histories of California Medicine and Medical Education, 1858 to 1942
This dissertation explores the histories of California’s earliest Black women physicians, Ruth J. Temple (1892–1984) and Edna L. Griffin (1905–1992), within the broader landscape of medicine and medical education in the United States from 1858 to 1942. By foregrounding the intellectual contributions, medical practices, and social activism of Black medical women, this study interrogates systemic oppression in medical education and professional practice, employing Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought (BFT) as a critical historical methodology. While scholarship on Black women physicians has largely focused on figures in the South, Midwest, and East, this research addresses a critical gap by situating Ruth J. Temple (1892-1984) and Edna L. Griffin (1905-1992) in the American Far West, a region often overlooked in discussions of Black medical history. Their lives and careers illustrate the interplay between race, gender, and medical education in early twentieth-century California, challenging dominant historical narratives that have erased or marginalized Black women’s epistemologies. The dissertation’s methodology integrates archival research, oral history, and Black feminist epistemology to reconstruct the lived experiences of Temple and Griffin. Traditional archival sources, including newspapers, census records, and institutional reports, reveal significant gaps in documentation due to the systemic neglect of Black women’s histories. However, oral histories such as Temple’s interview in the Black Women Oral History Project (1977–1981) and Griffin’s oral history with the Pasadena Historical Society offer rich, firsthand accounts that mitigate archival silences. These oral narratives, alongside family archives and Griffin’s 1947 biography Let There Be Life , provide critical insight into their professional philosophies, challenges, and strategies of resistance. This study makes several key interventions. First, it reframes the historiography of medicine and medical education in the United States by positioning Black women as knowledge producers rather than subjects of medical exploitation. Second, it challenges the archival silences that have obscured the contributions of Black medical women in the American West, demonstrating how oral history can serve as a corrective to incomplete records. Third, it advances a Black feminist analysis of medicine, arguing that Black women physicians like Temple and Griffin not only practiced medicine but also theorized healthcare through the lens of racial uplift, community empowerment, and social justice. Their work refutes the white, male-dominated historiography that has traditionally framed medical education reform as a linear progression toward inclusivity. Ultimately, this study argues that Black women physicians in early twentieth-century California were central to the evolution of medical education and health care reform, yet their contributions remain marginalized in historical discourse. By centering their voices and intellectual labor, this dissertation disrupts monolithic narratives in the history of medicine and reclaims Black women’s place in the field’s development. It calls for a historiographical shift that acknowledges not only the presence of Black women in medicine but also their roles as innovators, educators, and theorists who challenged systemic barriers and redefined the practice of healing. The findings of this dissertation have implications for multiple disciplines, including history of medicine, women’s history, and Black studies. Future research should expand beyond California to explore the experiences of Black women physicians across the American West, interrogating the ways in which migration, professional networks, and activism intersected with medical practice. Additionally, continued efforts to recover and analyze oral histories can provide deeper insight into how Black women navigated exclusionary structures in higher education and the medical profession. By historicizing the knowledge production of early Black women physicians, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of scholarship that recognizes the epistemological contributions of Black women in medicine. Their work, often dismissed or overlooked, remains integral to understanding both the past and present struggles for health equity. As the field of medical history continues to evolve, centering Black women’s narratives offers a more inclusive and accurate account of the complexities of race, gender, and professionalization in American medicine and medical education.
Black feminist epistemologies, Black women physicians, Early twentieth century medical education, Los Angeles California, Oppression in medicine, Pasadena California, African American Studies, Higher Education
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