Dr. Joycelyn Elders

Dr. Minnie Joycelyn Elders made history in 1993 when President Bill Clinton appointed her as the first Black Surgeon General of the United States — and made even bigger news when she was fired for speaking honestly about public health. Her candid advocacy for comprehensive sex education, contraception access, and frank discussion of human sexuality was too much for a political establishment more comfortable with silence than with saving lives.

Born in Schaal, Arkansas, in 1933, the eldest of eight children in a sharecropping family, Elders picked cotton before and after school. She received a scholarship to Philander Smith College at 15, earned her medical degree from the University of Arkansas, and became a nationally recognized pediatric endocrinologist. As Arkansas Health Director under then-Governor Clinton, she dramatically expanded childhood immunization rates and prenatal care.

As Surgeon General, Elders championed evidence-based public health policies with characteristic bluntness. She advocated for drug legalization studies, universal health care, and comprehensive sex education — positions that were controversial then but are mainstream now. Her firing in 1994 said more about American politics than about her competence. She returned to the University of Arkansas and continued teaching and advocating for the rest of her career.