A physician and a civil rights activist, Dr. Dorothy Celeste Ferebee, née Boulding was an energetic supporter of racial fairness and women’s health care. Dr. Ferebee established Southeast Neighborhood House in southeast D.C. She managed several local and national organizations. Ferebee was born in Norfolk, Virginia on October 10, 1898. Her father’s parents were former slaves. As a child, her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts where she and her brother grew up in Beacon Hill, a middle-class town. Her childhood was enhanced with great role models. There were eight attorneys in her family and she was exposed to many topics related to law, however her interest was in medicine. As a child, Ferebee wanted to cure the injured and began by nursing distressed animals. She graduated from English High School with top honors. After high school, she attended Simmons College in Boston. While there, she decided to apply to medical school. Ferebee was accepted to Tufts University School of Medicine and acquired her M.D. As one of the top five graduates of her class, she faced the roadblocks of racism while applying for intern positions at segregated hospitals. She moved to Washington D.C., accepting an internship at Freedman’s Hospital. When her internship was completed in 1925, Dr. Ferebee opened her own practice in a dilapidated section of Capitol Hill with the lack of an ambulance service. She was able to increase health care in the community with the influence of Friendship House trustees, (a segregated medical center for charity) to open an adjunct clinic for African-Americans. The clinic became Southeast Neighborhood House. Following was the Southeast Neighborhood Society, a day care center with playground for children of working mothers. Dr. Ferebee became a Obstetrics Clinician affiliated with Howard University Medical School the same year. It was one of the few hospitals that provided health care to the African-American community under an African-American administration. She also became the originating president of philanthropic and educational Women’s Institute. In 1930 she married Dr. Claude Thurston Ferebee who was a dentist and professor at Howard University College of Dentistry. She became the mother of twins, a boy and girl. Dr. Ferebee became the medical director of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Mississippi Health Project from 1935 to 1942. In the face of unsympathetic and skeptical plantation owners, immunization programs were launch to combated smallpox, diphtheria, venereal diseases and malnutrition. Thus providing basic medical services to tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South. In 1949 while being an active member of the National Council of Negro Women, Dr. Ferebee became the second president of the organization, succeeding friend Mary McLeod Bethune. There she worked to end discrimination for minorities in the armed forces, education, housing and health care. Dr. Ferebee also became president of the Girl Scouts. Dr. Ferebee toured Africa for five months during the 1960s after being appointed to the Council for Food for Peace by President John F. Kennedy. She died in Washington D.C. on September 14, 1980.

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