James McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865) was an American medical doctor, apothecary, abolitionist and author. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree. His M.D. was awarded by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland, where a building has been dedicated to him. After his return to the United States, he also became the first African American to run a pharmacy in the nation.
In addition to practicing as a physician for nearly 20 years at the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan, Smith was a public intellectual: he contributed articles to medical journals, participated in learned societies, and wrote numerous essays and articles drawing from his medical and statistical training. He used his training in medicine and statistics to refute common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine, and society in general. He was invited as a founding member of the New York Statistics Society in 1852, which promoted a then new science. Later he was elected as a member in 1854 of the recently founded American Geographic Society. He was never admitted to the American Medical Association or local medical associations, very likely as a result of the systemic racism that Smith confronted throughout his medical career. In 2018, Smith received a posthumous fellowship from the New York Academy of Medicine.
He has been most well known for his leadership as an abolitionist: a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with Frederick Douglass he helped start the National Council of Colored People in 1853, the first permanent national organization for blacks. Douglass called Smith "the single most important influence on his life." Smith was one of the Committee of Thirteen, who organized in 1850 in Manhattan to resist the newly passed Fugitive Slave Law by aiding refugee slaves through the Underground Railroad. Other leading abolitionist activists were among his friends and colleagues. From the 1840s, Smith lectured on race and abolitionism and wrote numerous articles to refute racist ideas about black capacities.
Both Smith and his wife were of mixed African and European descent. As he became economically successful, Smith built a house in a mostly white neighborhood; in the 1860 census he and his family were classified as white, along with their neighbors. (In the census of 1850, while living in a predominately African-American neighborhood, they had been classified as mulatto.) Smith served for nearly 20 years as the physician at the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York. After it was burned down in July 1863 by a mob in draft riots in Manhattan, in which nearly 100 blacks were killed, Smith moved his family and practice to Brooklyn for their safety. Many other blacks left Manhattan for Brooklyn at the same time. The parents stressed education for their children. In the 1870 census, his widow and children continued to be classified as white.
Smith was born into slavery in 1813 in Manhattan and was set free on July 4, 1827, at the age of 14, by the Emancipation Act of New York. That was the date when New York officially freed its remaining slaves. His mother Lavinia was born enslaved. He later described her as a "self-emancipated woman". She was born into slavery in South Carolina and had been transported to New York as an enslaved woman.
He grew up only with his mother. As an adult, McCune Smith alluded to white ancestry through his mother's family, saying he had kin in the South, some of whom were slaveholders and others slaves.
Smith attended the African Free School (AFS) #2 on Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where he was described as an "exceptionally bright student". He was selected to deliver an oratory to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French war hero who visited the school on September 10, 1824, during his tour of the country. Smith was among numerous boys from the school who went on to have brilliant careers, some of whom he worked with as adults in the abolitionist cause.
In the course of his studies, Smith was tutored by Rev. Peter Williams Jr., a graduate of the African Free School who had been ordained in 1826 as the second African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. Upon graduation, he applied to Columbia University and Geneva Medical College in New York State, but was denied admission due to racial discrimination. Williams encouraged Smith to attend the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He and abolitionist benefactors of the AFS provided Smith with money for his trip overseas and his education. Smith kept a journal of his sea voyage that expressed his sense of mission. After arriving in Liverpool and walking along the waterfront, he thought: "I am free!"
Through abolitionist connections, he was welcomed there by members of the London Agency Anti-Slavery Society. According to the historian Thomas M. Morgan, Smith enjoyed the relative racial tolerance in Scotland and England, which judicially abolished slavery in the 1770s. (New York abolished all slavery in 1827.) He studied at the University of Glasgow and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1835, a master's degree in 1836, and a medical degree in 1837. He completed an internship in Paris.
Smith knew he would face discrimination upon his return. When he tried to book a trip back to the United States after completing his studies, the ship captain refused passage because of Smith's race. His passage was secured by an intervention from John Murray, a prominent Glasgow abolitionist who wrote to the captain directly. When Smith did return to Manhattan, he was met with a hero's welcome by his former classmates and teachers who applauded his determination to fight for civil rights on American soil.
After establishing himself upon his return to New York City, in the early 1840s Smith married Malvina Barnett, a free woman of color who had graduated from the Rutgers Female Institute. The couple had eleven children; five survived to adulthood (the name of one child is unknown):
Frederick Douglass Smith (d. 1854)
Peter Williams Smith (d. 1854)
James Ward Smith (born 1845) became a teacher; he married and had an independent household by 1870
Henry M. Smith (1847 – d. before 1859)
Amy G. Smith (c. 1848–1849 – d. December 1849)
Mary (also called Maude) Smith, born c. 1855––56; never married; became a teacher and was living with her widowed brother Donald in 1900 in Queens. (Note: In the 1900 census, her birth was reported as September 1842, but this is not consistent with her age in the 1860 and 1870 censuses, and she did not appear in the 1850 census.)
Donald Smith (born 1858) became a lawyer, married and was a widower by 1900, living in Queens. His household included his older sister Maude and two siblings of his late wife: his widowed brother-in-law Edward, a physician born in England, and sister-in-law Emma Callaghan, an unmarried teacher.