Lucy Hughes Brown


Lucy Hughes Brown was the first African-American woman physician in South Carolina and the cofounder of a nursing school and hospital.

Biography

Lucy Manetta Hughes was born in Mebane, NC, on April 12, 1863. She attended Scotia Seminary in Concord, graduating in 1885. She went on to study at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, graduating with her medical degree in 1894.
In 1889 she married David Brown, a clergyman.
Brown practiced medicine in Wilmington for two years, and then in 1896 she and her husband moved to Charleston, SC. The state's first African-American woman physician, she joined with other black professionals—including Dr. Alonzo Clifton McClennan—to cofound the Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1897. She was head of the school's department of nursing and its associated training program, which graduated its first class in 1898. Brown also helped to edit the state's first black medical periodical, the Hospital Herald, which was founded in 1898 In 1902, the British Journal of Nursing recognized her as a leader in her profession in South Carolina.
Suffering from ill health, Brown retired in 1904. She died in Charlotte on June 26, 1911.