formal medical degree: Harriet A. Washington, “The Invisible Man: African Americans in Biomedical Research,” unpublished manuscript, July 2006.
Glasgow Emancipation Society: Bob Davern, “Surgeon and Abolitionist James McCune Smith: An African American Pioneer,” Readex, April 17, 2012, tinyurl.com/y5o65qqc.
profits from enslavement: No more than eighty slaves are thought to have lived in Scotland before it banned chattel enslavement in 1778, and the nation utterly abolished slavery the year after McCune Smith arrived. However, the university, like the nation, profited handsomely from the imperial slave trade. See Annie Brown, “Scotland and Slavery,” Black History Month (August 19, 2015), www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery; “Slavery, Freedom or Perpetual Servitude? The Joseph Knight Case,” National Records of Scotland, www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/slavery; “Slavery and the Slave Trade,” National Records of Scotland, webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20170203095547/https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/slavery-and-the-slave-trade; Iain Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756–1838 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
against American enslavement: Davern, “Surgeon and Abolitionist.”
Samuel Cartwright: Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 7 (1851): 691–715.
Josiah Nott: J. C. Nott, “The Mulatto a Hybrid—Probable Extermination of the Two Races If the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry,” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 6 (July 1843): 252–56.
“free” and “enslaved”: U.S. State Department, “Compilation of the Enumeration of the Inhabitants and Statistics of the United States, as Obtained at the Department of State, from the Returns of the Sixth Census” (1841).
particularly mental health: Albert Deutsch, “The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro Slavery Propaganda,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (1944): 469–82; Louis Dublin, “The Problem of Negro Health as Revealed by Vital Statistics,” Journal of Negro Education 6 (1937): 268–75; and Clayton E. Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 1790–1860: A Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003).
freedom could prove fatal: Thomas Mays, “Human Slavery as a Prevention of Pulmonary Consumption,” Transactions of the American Climatological Association 20 (1904): 192–97; and Clovis Semmes, Racism, Health, and Post-Industrialism: A Theory of African-American Health (Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 1996), 49–88.
detailed report: James McCune Smith, M.D., “The Memorial of 1844 to the U.S. Senate” (1844), in Herbert Morais, The History of the Afro-American in Medicine (Cornwells Heights, PA: Publishers Agency, 1976), 212–13.
never formally corrected: Robert W. Wood, Memorial of Edward Jarvis, M.D. (Boston: T. R. Martin & Sons, 1885), 12, 13. See also “Startling Facts from the Census,” The American Journal of Insanity 8 (October 1851): 153–55; ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.8.2.15.
posthumous acceptance: “New York Academy of Medicine Awards a Posthumous Fellowship to Dr. James McCune Smith 171 Years After It Was Withheld,” New York Academy of Medicine, November 5, 2018, nyam.org/news/article/academy-awards-posthumous-fellowship-dr-james-mccune-smith/.
orphans’ asylum was burned: Jeffrey Kraus, “The Burning of the Colored Orphanage Asylum, NYC,” Antique Photographics, April 24, 2012, antiquephotographics.com/the-colored-orphan-asylum-nyc.
his 1865 death: “Descendants of First Black US Doctor Mark NYC Grave,” African America, September 26, 2010, www.africanamerica.org/topic/descendants-of-1st-black-us-doctor-mark-nyc-grave.
1849–1854: Oregon
“dangerous subjects”: Gregory R. Nokes, “Dangerous Subjects,” Oregon Humanities Magazine, August 9, 2013.
2016 statistics: “Data Profiles,” American Community Survey, 2016, www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/data-profiles/2016/.
1854–1859: Dred Scott
“a point of illumination”: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 7.
1859–1864: Frederick Douglass
The formerly enslaved: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1845).
he fled to Britain: David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 305.
“was about to rivet”: Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, CT: 1892), 390.
“I knew if my enemies”: Ibid., 396.
Douglass had quietly: Blight, Douglass, 319.
“shall not brand”: Frederick Douglass, “The Mission of the War,” address delivered at Cooper Institute, New York City, January 13, 1864, in New York Tribune, January 14, 1864.
“The republic was”: Blight, Douglass, 388.
severely restricted: Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), Kindle loc. 6882.
Abolitionists faced murder: Ibid., Kindle loc. 5184.
“We stand in our place”: Douglass, “Mission of the War.”
“The recruitment of black”: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 621.
“It came to be”: Douglass, Life and Times, 405.
“as to giving the”: Frederick Douglass, “The Reasons for Our Troubles,” speech delivered in National Hall, Philadelphia, January 14, 1862, in Douglass’ Monthly, February 1862.
“abolition, though now”: Douglass, “Mission of the War.”
“a mightier work”: “Our Work Is Not Done,” speech delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia, December 3–4, 1863.
“They dreaded the clamor”: Douglass, Life and Times, 471–72.
“Patrick, Sambo”: Faye E. Dudden, Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 169.