African American and Women’s Medical Education University of Michigan Medical School Class Portrait, 1928

Medical School University of Michigan

Photograph

Randall Studio. University of Michigan Medical School student and faculty portrait, 1928, documents racial and gender inclusion within a major American medical school during a period when African American and women physicians remained sharply underrepresented in medical education. The portrait supports research into professional training, race, gender, and institutional access in interwar medicine, especially because the group includes one African American man and four women among 82 students. The University of Michigan had admitted women beginning in 1870, and Sophia B. Jones became its first African American woman to earn a medical degree in 1885, giving this later class portrait added relevance within the school’s longer history of medical education and inclusion.

Silver gelatin photograph by Randall Studio. 1928. 22 x 18 inches. Mounted to photographer’s board. The large-format image shows 82 students and faculty arranged in individual portrait format, including four female students and one African American student. The scale and formal presentation identify the photograph as an institutional record of a medical cohort rather than a casual class image.

The photograph captures a visibly limited but historically meaningful presence of women and an African American student in elite medical training before mid-century civil rights reforms. Small 1.5-inch tear to one corner, barely affecting one of the 82 images; very small chips to side and top edges, not affecting text or images; very good. Strong visual evidence of race, gender, and professional formation at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1928.

Item #18280

Price: $450.00