| Biography: | Born in Great Barrington, Mass., Dr. May Edward Chinn was the first African-American woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical School (1926), the first black female intern at Harlem Hospital, and for many years the only back female physician in Harlem. Her father had been a slave who escaped from the Chinn plantation in Virginia in 1864, and her mother was born on a Chickahominy Indian reservation near Norfolk, Va.
May Chinn attended Columbia University Teachers' College, majoring in music, and for a period in the 1920's was a piano accompanist for singer Paul Robeson. In the 1940's, she gained professional recognition as a pioneer in early cancer detection and was invited to work at the Strang Clinic, where she stayed for almost thirty years. In the last few years of her life, she was a consultant to the Phelps-Stokes Fund, an educational foundation which was headed by her nephew, Franklin Williams. She received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Columbia University and New York University.
Dr. Chinn lived at 409 Edgecombe Avenue from 1942 to 1957 and maintained a professional office in the building. At the time of her death, she lived in Morningside Gardens. |
