The First Female President of The National Medical Association, Edith Irby Jones, Was A Member of Delta Sigma Theta

Did you know that the first woman to serve as president of the National Medical Association was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.? Her name was Dr. Edith Irby Jones, and she spent her life breaking barriers in American medicine.

Edith Mae Irby Jones was born on December 23, 1927, in Conway, Arkansas. The daughter of a sharecropper, she lost her father as a young girl and was raised by a mother who worked as a domestic. She excelled in school and went on to attend Knoxville College, the historically Black institution in Tennessee, where she earned a degree in chemistry, graduating with honors. As the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences documents, it was during her undergraduate years at Knoxville College that she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

In 1948, Irby Jones made history. She became the first African American admitted to the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, and the first Black student to attend a previously all-white medical school anywhere in the South. She earned her M.D. in 1952, enduring segregation on campus while proving herself one of the finest students in her class.

Irby Jones built a distinguished career in internal medicine. As the Texas State Historical Association records, she settled in Houston, where she opened a private practice in the Third Ward, served as chief of staff at Riverside Hospital, helped establish Mercy Hospital, and became a co-owner of Park Plaza Hospital, all while caring for patients who often could not afford to pay.

Her leadership reached the national stage in 1985, when she was unanimously elected the first woman president of the National Medical Association, the nation’s oldest and largest organization of Black physicians. She used her platform to expand health care access at home and abroad.

Dr. Edith Irby Jones died on July 15, 2019, in Houston. From the halls of Knoxville College to the front lines of American medicine, Delta Sigma Theta’s Edith Irby Jones opened doors for the Black doctors and patients who came after her.