BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY - AFRICAN AMERICAN " CLARA BRAWNER " WAS THE ONLY AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN PHYSICIAN IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE IN THE MID-1950s. - GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

                                          BLACK  SOCIAL  HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Clara Brawner 
Clara Arena Brawner (1929 - Oc­to­ber 4, 1991) was the only African-Amer­i­can woman physi­cian in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee in the mid-1950s. The daugh­ter of a physi­cian and a nurse, Brawner was born in Geor­gia and raised in Mem­phis and at­tended Man­as­sas High School. She at­tended Spel­man Col­lege for her un­der­grad­u­ate ed­u­ca­tion, then moved to Nashville, Ten­nessee for med­ical school, grad­u­at­ing from Meharry Med­ical Col­lege in 1954. After a year­long in­tern­ship at her alma mater, Brawner re­turned to Mem­phis, where she prac­ticed pe­di­atrics at sev­eral hos­pi­tals and was ac­tive po­lit­i­cally. She was the chair of the Collins Chapel Hos­pi­tal pe­di­atrics de­part­ment and its sci­en­tific re­search de­part­ment, worked for the Vet­er­ans' Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and was a leader in the Bluff City Med­ical So­ci­ety, the Mem­phis De­part­ment of Pub­lic Health, and the Shelby County De­part­ment of Pub­lic Health. She was a Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Fam­ily Physi­cians, chaired the Fam­ily Prac­tice Sec­tion of the Na­tional Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion,[1] and re­ceived many com­mu­nity ser­vice awards. In 1989, she began study­ing the­ol­ogy, and con­tin­ued her stud­ies until her death in 1991.[2][3]

Brawner's sis­ter was Alpha Brawner, a renowned opera singer.