Greetings, again, fellow historio-medico aficionados, Kevin here for the second part of a series spotlighting the achievements of BIPOC Fellows. Last month, in honor of Black History Month, I introduced readers to , the first Black Fellows of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. For March, in honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, this article highlights Dr. Helen O. Dickens (1909-2001), the first Black woman admitted into the College Fellowship.
Helen Octavia Dickens was born in Dayton, OH, on February 21, 1909. Her father, Charles Warren Dickens, had formerly been enslaved. Self-educated and well-read, he took on the last name Dickens after emancipation in honor of famous British author Charles Dickens. A believer in the power of education, he and his wife, Daisy Jane Dickens, encouraged Helen to get an education and pursue a professional career. Her family initially encouraged her to become a nurse; however, Helen had bigger dreams. She later recalled, “I got it into my head that if I were going to be a nurse, I might as well be a doctor” and looked to break into a field dominated by white men.
Rampant racial and gender discrimination did not deter her. In 1932, she completed her bachelor’s degree in medical science at the University of Illinois. Despite receiving rejections from several white and HBCU medical schools, she persevered and earned her medical degree at the University of Illinois in 1934. Reflecting on the prejudice she faced both as a person of color and a woman pursuing a career in medicine, she later told a reporter, “In medical school, I used to say I’m laboring under a double handicap.”
Racist and sexist practices in the medical field made it difficult for her to get a foothold in the medical field. However, a flyer at the University of Illinois Medical school offered an opportunity. Philadelphia physician put out flyers at medical schools looking for “a Black female to join her in Philadelphia.” Another pioneering Black physician, in 1931, Alexander founded Aspiranto Health Home, a clinic that provided free and low-cost healthcare to North Philadelphia’s predominantly poor and Black residents. Healthcare services offered at Aspiranto included gynecological and post-natal care. Dickens joined Alexander at Aspiranto in 1935 and continued to help disadvantaged communities throughout her career.
Dickens spent the rest of her medical career breaking through barriers. In 1945, she became the first Black woman in Philadelphia to become a certified OB-GYN. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she became the first Black woman to be named a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She was the first Black woman in Philadelphia to work in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. On January 7, 1959, she was inducted into The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the first Black woman accepted into the Fellowship. From 1948 to 1967, she was head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Mercy-Douglass Hospital. She also held faculty positions at the and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dickens was also a vocal advocate for women’s health, especially for teens of color. In 1967, she established a clinic for pregnant teenagers at the University of Pennsylvania and participated in research programs and public health campaigns related to youth reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections, and teen pregnancy. She was also an early advocate for pap smears to detect cervical cancer. In fact, she offered pap smears for free to Black women in low-income areas of the city, providing mobile services in her van. “If every woman in Philadelphia had a Pap test once a year,” she told a newspaper reporter in 1968, “no woman need die of uterine cancer.”
During her storied career, she won numerous awards, including Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania (1952), Woman of the Year by the Philadelphia branch of the American Medical Women’s Association (1960), the Gimbel Philadelphia Award (1971), and the Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women (1986). In 1999, the University of Pennsylvania renamed its center for women’s health the
Sources:
Delach, Katie. Penn Medicine News, February 22, 2017. Accessed March 2, 2021.
LDS Genesis Group. Accessed March 2, 2021.
National Library of Medicine. Accessed March 2, 2021.
Wikipedia. Accessed March 2, 2021.
Gross, Rachel E. BBC.October 12, 2020. Accessed March 3, 2021.
Pray, Rusty. “Helen Dickens, 92, a pioneer in obstetrics.” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 6, 2001.