Story Experience: 1900 – 1926
Young Franklin Robey and his mother, Ellen (Courtesy of Dr. and Mrs. John Stone)
Dr. Franklin Robey moved to Houston in 1887 to open his medical practice. His arrival in this Texas city marked the end of a remarkable personal journey. Dr. Robey had been born a slave. The end of the Civil War brought freedom, but he and other African Americans found only limited opportunities to pursue their education thereafter - at a few northern schools or at all-black colleges across the South. Dr. Robey attended the University of Chicago School for Physicians and Surgeons before moving to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, where he graduated in 1883.
In 1887, Houston had only two African-American physicians, including Dr. E.B. Ramsey, the first African-American physician to work in Houston. They laid the foundations for black health care in the city. Dr. Robey died in 1903, but he left a personal legacy that stretches across the tumultuous twentieth century. His two great-great granddaughters, Dr. Faith Stone and Dr. Enid Stone, are physicians in Houston today.
Hear Mrs. Stone speak about here great-grandfather, Dr, Franklin Robey.
Related Information
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- Meharry Medical College
In 1876, the Freedman’s Aid Society of the United Methodist Episcopal Church created the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College of Nashville to train African-American men and women interested in becoming physicians. In 1900, this college became Walden University.
By 1915, Meharry Medical College had become a separate entity from the university. Meharry and the Howard University College of Medicine were the only predominantly black medical schools to survive the implications of the Flexner Report in 1910.
Before 1960, medical schools in the American South, with very few exceptions, remained closed to African Americans. Medical schools in other parts of the country often maintained a limited number of seats for blacks. Consequently, Meharry and Howard graduated the overwhelming majority of African-American physicians before 1960. Meharry graduates in Houston, including:
- Franklin Robey, 1883
- John Edward Perry, 1895
- Benjamin Jesse Covington, 1900
- Henry F. Lee, 1902
- George Washington Antoine, 1906
- George Patrick Alfonso Forde, 1913
- Rupert A. Roett, 1915
- Thomas Shadowens, 1917
- Charles Whittaker Pemberton, 1923
- Dogan Pemberton, 1929
- Robert Bacon, 1948
- Carl Mark Carroll, 1951
- Hargrove Wooten, 1951
- Clarence Higgins, 1953
- John Stone, 1956
- Blanchard Hollins, 1953
- Paris Bransford, 1963
- Natalie Carroll, 1974
- Faith Stone, 1983
- Enid Stone, 1985
Visit the Meharry Medical College website for more information.
