Rebecca Lee Crumpler (CAMED 1864)

In 1864, a 33-year-old woman named Rebecca Davis Lee (Crumpler) (b. February 8, 1831) became the first Black American woman to earn a degree in medicine, awarded by the New England Female Medical College, a pioneering institution that became Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine in 1873. Following her graduation, Rebecca worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau in Richmond, VA, created at the end of the Civil War to help recently freed enslaved people gain access to food, housing, and medical services. She returned to practice family medicine in Boston, and later published A Book of Medical Discourses. Although she encountered prejudice and hostility as a Black woman doctor, she persisted in her life’s mission: combating illness in women and children.

To learn more about the Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD Endowed Scholarship Fund, click here.

2026 Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium

View the Recording Here!

Read a summary of the Event Here!

A Conversation: Following in the Footprints of Rebecca Lee Crumpler with
Mardia Stone, MD, MPH (CAMED’79)
March 18, 2026

Mardia Stone, MD, MPH, is an international public health and social policy expert specializing in crisis management and disease prevention in post‑conflict settings and serves as a senior consultant/advisor to the division of global psychiatry, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center. She has served as a WHO consultant, Liberia’s Ebola Response Coordinator and senior advisor, and helped establish the National Public Health Institute of Liberia. A founding Fellow of the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons, she led development of Liberia’s national health and mental health policies and chaired President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s transition team on health. She is co‑author of Collapse and Resiliency: The Inside Story of Liberia’s Unprecedented Ebola Response.

Program:

5:30pm Welcome | Hee-Young Park, PhD, Dean, ad interim

5:35pm Keynote – A Conversation: Following in the Footprints of Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Mardia Stone, MD, MPH (CAMED 79)

6:15pm Panel and Q&A
Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD
Founding Director, CEID; Founding Director, BEACON; Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases,
Boston University School of Medicine; Adjunct Associate Professor, Global Health Security,
Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies

David C. Henderson, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine
Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Division of Psychiatry, Boston Medical Center

Moderator: Sheila E. Chapman, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine
Assistant Dean of Admissions
Program Director of EMSSP, and an Associate Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine

Rebecca Lee Crumpler (CAMED 1864)

2026 Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium

Past Programs

2023 Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium

2021 Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium