Above: Pitt Med’s Class of 1904. 

In the late 1800s, Charles C. and Maria Fairfax Brown, who are believed to have been formerly enslaved, parented eight children in Winchester, Virginia, while they pursued various business interests. Two of the children, James and Harrison Brown, graduated in 1904 from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, then known as the Western University of Pennsylvania Department of Medicine.

(James and Harrison could be considered Pitt Med’s first African American graduates, depending on where you draw the line on what was Pitt. In 1888, John Paul Golden became the first African American to earn an MD from an earlier Pitt Med forerunner, the Western Pennsylvania Medical College.)

Two of the Brown children died young. All the others—James and Harrison, as well as Sara, John, Edward and Nancy Brown—went on to achieve prominence in careers as physicians and pharmacists.

Judy Humbert, a local historian in Winchester, says a lesson she heard during high school about the Browns and their success against very long odds sparked a lifelong interest for her in the family and its connection to Pittsburgh; James and Harrison’s two brothers also settled in the city.

Humbert and her friend Sharon Dixon, both involved with the Black History Task Force in Winchester, started to dig deep several years ago into the family’s history—long after Humbert graduated from the Douglas School, an all-Black school that operated in Winchester from 1927-1966 during racial segregation, where she first heard about the Browns.

Humbert and Dixon sought records from Pitt, Howard University, Williams College, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, among other sources, through email and online searches. “We kept digging and digging,” Dixon says.

Using the information they collected, they created the theater reading, “The Science of Our Success: The Brown Family Story.” Humbert and Dixon held one of the readings in Frederick County, Virginia, at the one-time residence of 1904 Howard University medical school graduate Sara Brown.

“It was just amazing to be there at the homeplace of one of these doctors,” Dixon says.

Dixon discovered that Sara Brown was the first African American graduate of Cornell, which Sara attended before going to Howard. Among other notable successes, Sara Brown was a founding member of what now is the National Association of University Women, and in 1924 became the first alumna elected to the Howard University Board of Trustees.

James, Harrison and their brothers migrated to Pittsburgh, where they opened medical and pharmacy practices in Brushton and the Hill District. John Brown, the oldest of the brothers and a physician who graduated in 1896 from Medico-Chirurgical College in Philadelphia before it merged with the University of Pennsylvania in 1916, bought property along Wylie Avenue in the Hill District. His brothers James Brown, a fellow physician, and Edward Brown, a pharmacist, lived with him at least for part of their time in Pittsburgh, Dixon says.

Edward Brown and college friend Isaac Jennings established a pharmacy in the Hill District that is believed to be the first pharmacy in Pittsburgh owned and operated by African Americans.

James Brown became a urologist with a practice in Brushton and an estate near Schenley Park. Humbert says that, like his brothers and sisters, he was known for his generosity. “James would treat you even if you didn’t have the money,” she says. “That’s the kind of person he was.”

James Brown earned a pharmacy degree from Pitt after obtaining his MD and joined Pitt faculty as a demonstrator in urology before being promoted to instructor and then instructor emeritus during the 1953-54 school year. University Library System archivist Zach Brodt says James was among the first Black faculty at Pitt, if not the first.

Harrison Brown, who was older than James, became an internist, and according to historical information, was called “Dr. Harry” to avoid being confused with James. Williams College honored Harrison Brown as its first Black alumnus to earn an MD by creating the Harrison Morgan Brown Premedical Society for premed Black students.

Dixon doesn’t know why the Brown men settled in Pittsburgh, though it’s known they enjoyed close relationships here. In the meantime, Sara Brown and her sister Nancy Brown, a pharmacist, settled in the Washington, D.C., area after earning their degrees. Only Edward married.

Humbert says the Brown men planting themselves in the same city and the women in another “speaks to how close-knit the family was.”

Read more from the Fall 2023 issue.