Daniel Hale Williams
Daniel Hale Williams was an African-American general surgeon, who in 1893 performed the first documented, successful in the United States to repair a wound with heart surgery. He founded Chicago's Provident Hospital, the first non-segregated hospital in the United States and also founded an associated nursing school for African Americans.
In 1913, Williams was elected as the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.
At the time that Williams graduated from what is today Northwestern University Medical School, he opened a private practice where his patients were white and black. Black doctors, however, were not allowed to work in American hospitals. As a result, in 1891, Williams founded the Provident Hospital and training school for nurses in Chicago. This was established mostly for the benefit of African-American residents, to increase their accessibility to health care but its staff and patients were integrated from the start.
In addition to organizing Provident Hospital, Williams also established a training school for African-American nurses at the facility. In 1897, he was appointed to the Illinois Department of Public Health, where he worked to raise medical and hospital standards.