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The highest mark of our prosperity, and the strongest proofs of Negro capacity to master the sciences and fine arts, are evinced by the advanced positions to which Negro women have attained.
Sarah Garland Boyd Jones defied conventional expectations of gender and race in late nineteenth-century Virginia. As the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Richmond, Virginia, Sarah Jones was a forerunner during an age of pioneers. Pious, moral, and imbued with nineteenth-century notions of proper gender roles, Sarah was a nascent "race woman" who used the language of protest to advocate for the advancement of her community, women and men. And like many early African American female physicians from a socially privileged class, Jones was a self-reliant professional who transcended racial customs and misogynist attitudes to become renowned and respected in her field. Her professional life often blurred the artificial boundaries of race as her medical practice focused on women and children. Coinciding with the 1891 start of the black women's club movement, Jones's professional and community-focused outlook was framed by the crucible of postwar Richmond and bolstered during her work as a public school teacher and by her time at Howard University Medical School in Washington, D.C.
The Richmond Planet newspaper observed how Sarah Jones demonstrated her power as a "pioneer exponent of the principle of woman's rights" because of her willingness to take the reins and initiate action among her peers. Like her counterpart, Maggie Walker, who pioneered a clear bond of sisterhood and mutual support through her work in the black female-owned insurance company Woman's Union, Sarah drew support from this sister hood that nurtured an environment of accomplished black women. Deborah Gray White observed in her work, Ar'n't I a Woman., that this bond ensured that women would realize the motto, "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World." Hence, although Sarah was best known for pioneering services in the health care arena that enhanced the well-being of black Richmonders, her involvement as part of an emerging cadre of educated leaders who turned the ideology of a womans place on its head made her a role model for future leaders. Using the virtues associated with middle-class respectability to construct a public place for women, Sarah...