Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Trailblazers in Black History: Dr. Ethel D. Allen


Ethel D. Allen was the first African American councilwoman elected to an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council.

Allen once described herself as, "BFR—a black female Republican, an entity as rare as a black elephant and just as smart." In her career she challenged sexism and racism, and was devoted to the disadvantaged in her community as both a health care provider and a politician.

One of three children, Allen was born in 1929, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she lived and worked for most of her life. Her father, Sidney S. Allen, Sr. was a self-employed tailor, and her mother, known only as Mrs. Sidney S. Allen, was the only one of Allen's parents to graduate from high school. As a single parent she took on the legal guardianship of a child called Kathy Ann, whose parents had died shortly after her birth.

Allen's early education was at the predominantly white John W. Haliahan Girls Catholic High School, and then at all-black West Virginia State College, where she majored in chemistry and biology with a minor in mathematics. Fascinated by politics from an early age, she ran for student council president in high school, and for council president in her senior year at West Virginia, losing by only two votes (one of which was her own). 

Click here for additional information. 

Source: Changing the Face of Medicine

No comments: