Dorothy Brown (1919-2004), African-American surgeon. Born in Philadelphia, Brown was abandoned by her mother and spent her childhood in an orphanage in New York. When having her tonsils out as a child she decided she wanted to become a doctor. Brown enrolled at Meharry Medical College, Tennessee, in 1944. In 1948 she became the first African-American surgeon in the southern USA and in 1955 the first African-American female surgeon to be made a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. In 1956 Brown was the first single adoptive mother in Tennessee and in 1966 she became the first African-American female representative to the state legislature in Tennessee.