Hail Hail thrice Hail for our brother from the #WindyCity !!!!
Bro. Midian Othello Bousfield,MD
Bousfield was born Aug 22, 1885 in Tipton, Missouri to Willard Bousfield, a barber and businessman, and Cornelia Bousfield. The family moved to Kansas City, and after high school Bro. Bousfield graduated from the #UniversityofKansas in 1907 with a Bachelor’s degree. He then entered medical school at #NorthwesternUniversity in #Chicago where he earned his M.D. in 1909. The following year Bousfield began working as an intern at #HowardUniversity’s Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington,DC . He worked as a physician briefly in Kansas City before prospecting in #Brazil. It should be noted that bro was one of four of the first black doctors to work at Old General Hospital in KC.
Bousfield accepted a job as secretary of the RailwayMen’s International Benevolent Assoc, an #AfricanAmerican railroad union that later became the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. His wife Maudelle taught in the Chicago Public Schools and became its first African American principal.
In 1919 Midian Bousfield left the union to become one of the founders of Liberty Life Insurance Co in Chicago. Bousfield was the medical director and later president of Liberty Life. In 1929 he helped engineer the merger of Liberty Life and two other black insurance companies, #SupremeLife of Columbus, OH and #NortheasternLife of Newark, NJ. Bro. Bousfield became the VP and Medical Director of the combined firm, Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Co.
Bousfield spent much of the remainder of his career developing and improving health care and medical training opportunities for African Americans. As director of Negro Health Division for the Julius Rosenwald Fund, he helped finance the education of numerous future black physicians and nurses. Bro. Bousfield was also responsible for developing the Infantile Paralysis Unit at #Tuskegee and at #ProvidentHospital in Chicago. From 1933 to 1934 he was president of the #National Medical Association,an organization of black physicians across the nation. In 1939 Bousfield was appointed the first African American member of the Chicago Board of education. In 1942, Bousfield was selected to command the U.S Army’s Station Hospital, the first all-African American hospital in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The hospital served the 14,000 black women and men stationed at the fort in training for combat in World War II. Bousfield earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and retired in 1945 as the Medical Corp’s first African American colonel. He left this life at his home on February 16, 1948 in the city of wind…..
We honor his legacy now and forever thrice Hail!!!!!