Monroe Alpheus Majors
Monroe Alpheus Majors | |
---|---|
Central Tennessee College | |
Alma mater | Meharry Medical College |
Occupation(s) | physician, journalist, writer |
Monroe Alpheus Majors (October 12, 1864 – December 10, 1960)
Early life
Monroe Alpheus Majors was born in
Career
Majors then moved back to Texas to practice medicine, working in Brenham, Dallas, and Calvert. He was the first African-American doctor in Calvert. In 1886, he established the Lone State State Medical Association for African-American physicians, as an alternative to the American Medical Association which restricted black membership. In 1888, he moved to Los Angeles, where he lectured at the Los Angeles Medical College. He was the first African American to pass the California Board of Medical Examination.[2]
Majors was also active in civil rights, first in Texas and later in California. He edited the Los Angeles Western News, where he advocated for African-American appointment to civic positions.[2]
In 1889, Majors married Georgia A. Green, who was from Texas, and in 1890 they returned to Waco, where he practiced medicine and taught at Paul Quinn College. He also edited a paper, the Texas Searchlight, raised money for the building of a hospital, and opened the first black-owned drugstore in the American Southwest.[2]
In 1893, Majors published Noted Negro Women. He wrote the book mainly to show the accomplishments of black women, but also to express the "progress" of African Americans since the end of slavery in the 1860s.
Later life and family
In 1889, Majors married Georgia A. Green, and they divorced in 1908. In 1909 he married Estelle C. Bonds, and he later married twice more.[2] A daughter of Majors and Estelle was Margaret Allison, who became a noted composer.[5] When Bonds and Majors divorced in 1917, Margaret's mother changed her last name from Majors to Bonds.[6] In the 1920s, Majors began to lose his eyesight and was forced to curtail his work.[1] He largely retired from medicine in 1923. In 1933, he moved back to Los Angeles, where he died aged 96 in 1960.[2]
References
- ^ a b "Majors, Monroe Alpheus", TSHA (Texas State Historical Association).
- ^ Henry Louis Gates Jr(eds), Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 694–696.
- ^ Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, "Black Male Perspectives on the 19th-Century Woman" in Harley, Sharon, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (eds), The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images, Black Classic Press, 1997, p. 39.
- ^ White, Deborah Gray, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994, WW Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 43–44.
- ^ Sadie, Julie Anne, and Rhian Samuel (eds), The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, WW Norton & Company, 1994, p. 72.
- ^ Walker-Hill, Helen, From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and their Music, University of Illinois Press, 2007, p. 141.