The National Medical Association Has Connected Black Physicians Since 1985

The American Medical Association had no written color bar in 1895. It did not need one. Membership ran through county and state societies, and across the Jim Crow South those societies barred Black doctors or did not exist for them. So Black physicians, dentists and pharmacists met at Atlanta’s First Congregational Church during the Cotton States and International Exposition and built their own. Dr. Robert F. Boyd of Meharry Medical College became the first president.

Joining today means walking into a network the NMA calls the collective voice of more than 30,000 African American physicians, organized into over 100 state and local affiliate societies across six geographic regions. Those local societies are where the everyday value lives. That is where a resident meets the attending who refers them, and where a physician new to a city finds a practice.

The Annual Convention and Scientific Assembly is the national version of that same room. The NMA says 45 of the 50 Category 1 credits required for licensure in 23 states can be earned there, across 25 specialty sections. The 2026 assembly met in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Members receive the Journal of the National Medical Association in print and electronic form, can submit a CV confidentially at no cost through the NMA Career Center, and get a free Physician Locator listing that helps patients searching for a Black doctor find them.

Dues are set so nobody starting out is shut out. Medical students pay $20 a year. Residents and fellows pay $40. A first-time physician member pays $250, and a doctor in their first year of practice pays $215.

Membership details are at nmanet.org/join-renew.

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