ABSTRACT
Gender, the configuration of sociosexual identity that helps to frame the status and role sets of each individual, intrudes in all domains of social life. Racial identity and the social construction of the "color line" have been the great overarching barriers to the successful development of careers in medicine among African American people. James McCune Smith was the first black American man to receive the M.D. degree; this event occurred in 1837. The first woman to receive a degree in medicine in the United States was Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849. The first black woman to receive an M.D. degree in the United States, Rebecca Lee, was to occur sometime later, earned in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Massachusetts. The differential interest in pediatrics among women could have been an indirect expression of their missionary zeal.
