Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson (October 17, 1864 – April 26, 1901) was an American physician. She was the first woman, of any race, to be licensed as a physician in Alabama.
Johnson was born Halle Tanner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the oldest daughter of Benjamin Tucker Tanner and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner, who were prominent figures in the local African-American community. She was the oldest of nine siblings, four sisters, two brothers, and two siblings who died in infancy. Her father was a minister at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh that also wrote several books, and Halle worked with him to publish the Christian Recorder, a publication of the church. Her brother was the famous painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, and her niece was Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first black woman in the United States to received a Ph.D.
In June 1886, she married Charles Dillon who died from pneumonia in 1888, two years after their marriage. They had a child together named Sadie in 1887. Johnson returned home to her family and entered the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania at the age of 24, graduating with honors in 1891.
Around the time of her graduation, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had written to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, seeking an African-American physician. Dillon accepted the offer soon after her graduation.
Johnson went on to work at Tuskegee Institute from 1891 to 1894. She also was accompanied by her father where Bishop Benjamin Tanner lectured for a year at the institute Bible School. There, her teaching schedule consisted of instructing up to two classrooms per term, teaching courses on anatomy and hygiene. She also oversaw the medical care of 480 students, families, faculty, and officers. Johnson cultivated her own medicines to treat them. Her contributions at Tuskegee Institute earned her a salary of 600 dollars a year, including room and board, and was given a month of vacation each year. She founded a nursing school as well, and also practiced medicine and pharmacy in the community. In addition, Johnson founded the Lafayette Dispensary for locals.
Later life
Johnson married a mathematics professor at Tuskegee, the Reverend John Quincy Johnson, in 1894, and she ended her professorial career when they moved to Columbia, South Carolina that year. Her husband became president of Allen University, a private school for black students. They then moved to Hartford, Connecticut, Atlanta, Georgia, and Princeton, New Jersey for his education in theology; they had three sons together, John Quincy Jr., Benjamin T., and Henry Tanner. In 1900, the Johnsons moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where John became a minister at Saint Paul’s AME Church.
Johnson died from dysentery during childbirth on April 26, 1901. She is buried at Nashville’s Greenwood Cemetery.
Sources:
Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson – Wikipedia
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3925
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