Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard UniversityThe National Negro Advisory Council of Planned Parenthood Federation of America formed in 1942 to lead educational and outreach efforts in Black communities. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee, Mabel Keaton Staupers, and Dr. Paul B. Cornely were just three of more than 100 Black leaders and health care providers who joined the initiative, along with W.E.B. Dubois and Mary McLeod Bethune. This Black History Month, we honor Black leaders of the past who fought for the lives, dignity, and future of black communities in the US.

U.S. National Library of Medicine

Dr. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980) was an obstetrician and civil rights activist who was the first medical director of the Mississippi Health Project, working to administer health care to thousands of Black Mississippians during Jim Crow. Later, she became president of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, president of the National Council of Negro Women, and a vice president of Girl Scouts of the United States of America.

U.S. National Library of Medicine

Dr. Paul B. Cornely (1906-2002) was a physician and civil rights leader who fought for desegregation in hospitals and became first Black president of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in 1969.

Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

Mabel Keaton Staupers (1890-1989) (center) was a nurse who helped establish the Booker T. Washington Sanitarium, a Harlem-based health care facility that was the first to treat Black tuberculosis patients. Later, she fought against quotas that limited the number of black nurses allowed in the military during World War II.