Dazelle Simpson, MD, and her husband George Simpson, MD, were among hundreds of attendees at the hospital’s centennial celebration June 25.
Like many hospitals in the South, Jackson Memorial Hospital remained segregated until the 1960s, with separate patient wards and exam rooms for African-American patients.
Dr. Dazelle Simpson was the institution’s first black pediatrician and spent 40 years at the hospital until retiring in 1995. Five years after she started at Jackson Memorial, her husband became the hospital’s first black surgeon.
Dr. Simpson told the Miami Herald one of the biggest accomplishments at the institution was its decision to hire an African-American man, Henri R. Ford, MD, as dean and chief academic officer of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She told the publication such a decision would have been unthinkable when she first started at the hospital, according to the report.
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