l leaders of their race for the Liberian colony. "To
execute this scheme, leaders of the colonization movement endeavored to
educate Negroes in mechanic arts, agriculture, science and Biblical
literature. Exceptionally bright youths were to be given special training
as catechists, teachers, preachers and physicians. Not much was said about
what they were doing, but now and then appeared notices of Negroes who had
been prepared privately in the South or publicly in the North for service
in Liberia. Dr. William Taylor and Dr. Fleet were thus educated in the
District of Columbia. In the same way John V. DeGrasse, of New York, and
Thomas J. White, of Brooklyn, were allowed to complete the medical course
at Bowdoin in 1849. In 1854 Dr. DeGrasse was admitted as a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society. In 1858 the Berkshire Medical School
graduated two colored doctors who were gratuitously educated by the
American Educational Society."[6] Dr. A. T. Augusta studied medicine at the
University of Toronto. He qualified by competitive examination and obtained
the position of surgeon in the United States Army, being the first Negro to
hold such a position. After the war he became one of the leading colored
physicians in the District of Columbia. Prior to 1861 Negroes had taken
courses at the Medical School of the University of New York; Caselton
Medical School in Vermont; Berkshire Medical School in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts; the Rush Medical School in Chicago; the Eclectic Medical
School in Philadelphia; the Homeopathic College of Cleveland; and the
Medical School of Harvard University.

The next colored physician of prominence was Martin R. Delany. Delany grew
to manhood in Pittsburgh, where early in his career he began the study
of medicine, but abandoned it for pursuits in other parts. In 1849 he
returned to that city and resumed his studies under Doctors Joseph P.
Gazzan and Francis J. Lemoyne, who secured for him admission to the
medical department of Harvard College after he had been refused by the
University Pennsylvania, Jefferson College, and the medical colleges of
Albany and Geneva, New York. After leaving Harvard, he, like Dr. Smith,
became interested in the discussion of the superiority and inferiority of
races, and traveled extensively through the West, lecturing with some
success on the physiological aspect of these subjects. He then returned to
Pittsburgh, where he became a practitioner and distinguished himself