Science & invention / Civil rights & activism
Ethelene Crockett
1914–1978 · physician, obstetrician-gynecologist, activist
Michigan's first African American woman board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, who practiced in Detroit for decades and led public health and women's rights campaigns.
- Born
Michigan- Died
- Birth name
- Ethelene Jones
- Also known as
- Ethelene Jones Crockett
- Detroit years
- 1940s–1978
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Ethelene Jones grew up in Jackson, Michigan, graduated from Jackson Junior College in 1934 and went on to the University of Michigan, where she met and married George Crockett Jr., later a Detroit judge and congressman. In 1942, at 28, married and the mother of three, she entered Howard University's medical school. No hospital in Detroit would accept her as a resident because she was Black and a woman, so she completed her training in obstetrics and gynecology at Sydenham Hospital in New York. She became Michigan's first African American woman board-certified in the specialty and practiced in Detroit for decades, later as a gynecologist at Grace and Harper hospitals. She directed the Detroit Maternal Infant Care Project from 1967 to 1970, helped design the Detroit Model Neighborhood Comprehensive Health Center, led the 1972 fight to liberalize Michigan's abortion law and became the first woman president of the American Lung Association. A Detroit school on Mack Avenue has borne her name since 1980.
Highlights
- Michigan's first African American woman board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology
- First woman president of the American Lung Association
- Directed the Detroit Maternal Infant Care Project, 1967–1970
- Detroit Medical Society Physician of the Year, 1978
- Michigan Women's Hall of Fame, 1988
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Memorial · 1980–present
Crockett Midtown High School (Ethelene Jones Crockett school)
Detroit Public Schools dedicated its first vocational-technical center to her in 1980; the Mack Avenue campus later became the Crockett technical high school. From 2011 to 2022 a science and medicine school there bore Ben Carson's name, and in 2022 it was renamed for Crockett again.
Worked here · 1970s
Harper University Hospital
She worked as a gynecologist at Grace and Harper hospitals in the 1970s.