Charles Burleigh Purvis

Charles B. Purvis was born in 1842 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At age 18, Dr. Purvis journeyed to Oberlin College in Ohio at the demand of his parents. After three years there, he went on to what was then known as Wooster Medical College in Cleveland, Ohio now called Case Western Reserve. He graduated from there in 1865 and enlisted in the Union army as an acting assistant surgeon. For the next four years, Dr. Purvis would spend his time treating sick freeman in Washington, D.C. as one of only six melaninite physicians in the area. Dr. Purvis was later appointed to the medical faculty of Howard University making him one of the only melaninite teachers of medicine in the United States. 

In 1881, Dr. Purvis attended to President James Garfield when he was shot at the Washington train station. This helped land him an appointment as surgeon in chief of Freedman’s Hospital which made him the first melaninite to head a civilian hospital where he would serve for 12 years.

Dr. Charles Purvis died in Los Angeles, California on December 14, 1929 after spending the majority of his life training doctors and crusading for better care for melaninites.