Introducing: The Transatlantic World of James McCune Smith

A newsletter about the pioneering African American physician, author, and intellectual Dr James McCune Smith (1813-1865)

Hello!

I’d like to introduce my new newsletter dedicated to the transatlantic world of the great American physician and intellectual James McCune Smith. I’m delighted to announce - to all who may not know already - that I’m writing a biography of him, under contract with the University of Georgia Press. (It will be his first published scholarly biography, to my knowledge, building on my PhD thesis, the first completed book-length monograph on his life.) This newsletter will share intriguing discoveries and facts about McCune Smith’s life and his world that I come across - and have already come across - as I conduct research for the book and write it.

First, let me introduce the subject of this newsletter to all who may not yet be familiar with him:

James McCune Smith was among the most original and wide-ranging thinkers and authors of his day. He is best known for being the first African American to practice medicine in the United States with a medical degree. As important as this achievement was, it is only the tip of the iceberg of what this extraordinary individual accomplished in his too-short lifetime.

Born in New York City to Lavinia Smith, a formerly enslaved woman originally from South Carolina, he went on to have a career that any Ivy League graduate with inherited wealth and all the leisure time and freedom that it could buy would envy. McCune Smith had no such advantages, but he did have these: a “self-emancipated”* mother who worked hard to give him as many opportunities as possible in a nation plagued by slavery, segregation, and racial prejudice; extremely supportive communities who helped him realize his dreams and ambitions; a sparkling, endlessly inquisitive intelligence; and an endless drive to improve the well-being and opportunities of as many people as possible.

McCune Smith went on to become a triple graduate of a first-class university (University of Glasgow: BA, 1835; MA, 1836; MD, 1837); a widely respected, financially successful physician and pharmacist who broke many racial barriers (additional examples: he was the first African American to have work published in European and American medical journals); ‘probably the first experimental writer in the African American tradition,’ as Henry Louis Gates, Jr writes†; a founder or co-founder of many abolitionist and civil rights organizations; a leading member of the African American press in its founding era; an innovator in statistics, anthropology, and race theory; and so much more.

The reason why this newsletter is called “The Transatlantic World of…” rather than just “The World of…” is because McCune Smith’s life and thought spanned the Atlantic in so many respects. For one thing, his triple graduation from a British university, and his experiences in Britain and beyond, profoundly shaped his thought and sensibilities. And while McCune Smith lived for all but five years of his life in his native New York, he continued to devour the science and literature of Europe and to write about it. It appears, for example, that he was the first African American to read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and to comment on it in a published work. This newsletter will explore this history, as well as the history of McCune Smith’s life and thought that’s tied to his native country.

This newsletter has a dual purpose. First, and most importantly, I hope to generate more interest in McCune Smith. Due to several accidents of history, McCune Smith has come to be at least as forgotten in our time as he was famous in his own. In tandem with many other wonderful scholars and authors who have been rediscovering him and his remarkable legacy over the last few decades, I hope to help restore him to widespread historical memory, as his legacy deserves.

Secondly, I also hope to generate some financial support for my work on McCune Smith and his world, which is currently unfunded. This newsletter will consist of a mix of freely accessible posts and some available only to paid subscribers. For those who can and do support my work by subscribing to this newsletter ($5 per month, $50 per year), thank you so very much! For those who can’t support this work financially but do so by subscribing to the free version (and hopefully by recommending this newsletter to others), I thank you as well.

I welcome your questions; if you’d like me to answer them in a future newsletter, please post them in the comments (I’ll address answers to the name you provide).

Happy belated New Year!

P.S. For earlier essays and other posts about Jame McCune Smith, you can see them at my website Ordinary Philosophy.

---

*McCune Smith described Lavinia as “self-emancipated”; see Frederick Douglass and James McCune Smith, My Bondage and My Freedom... With an Introduction by Dr. James M’Cune Smith (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), xxxi. How exactly she emancipated herself is still unknown; I am seeking to unravel this mystery.

†From Gates’ forward to The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (OUP, 2006), xi.