Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was born in 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.  Williams moved to three states and held two different jobs by the age of 13. In Baltimore, Maryland Daniel started an apprenticeship with a shoemaker.  As a teenager he trained and became a barber, and moved to live and work with a family who owned a barershop in Janesville, Wisconsin.  While working as a barber he met Dr. Henry Palmer, the Surgeon General of Wisconsin, and became his apprentice.  Dr. Palmer helped Williams and two others apply for The Chicago Medical School, and Northwestern University affiliate. Williams began studies in 1880, and graduated with his medical degree in 1883, to become one of only 4 African-American doctors in the Chicago area.

While practicing medicine, Dr. Williams observed that African American patients constantly got second-class medical treatment, and that Black physicians had limited career opportunities.  He also noted the fact that it was difficult for African American students to gain admission to medical and nursing schools.  As a result he opened Provident Hospital,  the first African American owned hospital in the United States.

In 1893, James Cornish was rushed to Provident Hospital with a stab wound to the chest, with no x-ray machines, the medical staff was uncertain of how to treat the injury.  Dr. Williams made the decision to open up Cornish’s chest to see what could be done to save his life.  He sutured the pierced blood vessel and tissue to stop the bleedeng and Cornish lived another 20 years. This was the first successful open heart surgery ever performed.

After a tenure as surgeon-in-chief at Freedman’s Hospital in D.C., and other career advancements, Dr. Williams married Alice Johnson and moved back to Chicago to head up Provident Hospital while holding other top positions in teaching and heading surgery at another Chicago hospital. He received numerous honors.  He retired in 1926 after a suffering a stroke.  This shoemaker turned barber turned surgeon died in 1931 in Idlewild, Michigan after a life of making strides for African Americans in medicine.