Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Born 1856 · Joined the Ancestors 1931

Fact

Performed the first successful open-heart surgery in 1893

Fact

Founded the first non-segregated hospital in America

Fact

First Black member of the American College of Surgeons

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery in 1893 — without the benefit of antibiotics, blood transfusions, or modern anesthesia. The patient, James Cornish, had been stabbed in the chest and was dying. Williams opened his chest, repaired the pericardium, and Cornish lived for another twenty years.

Williams also founded Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891 — the first non-segregated hospital in the United States and one of the first to have an interracial staff. It became a training ground for Black nurses and doctors shut out of white institutions.

Born in Pennsylvania to a mixed-race family, Williams apprenticed under a surgeon before attending Chicago Medical College. His dual legacy — medical pioneer and institution builder — changed both the practice and accessibility of medicine in America.