Throughout the month of February 2024, ACPHS's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team will help us recognize the contributions of various Black health care leaders. Follow along on our social media channels and in our weekly Campus Connections enews. Developed by first-year DEI work study students, Angelina Reish, pharmacy, and Tobias LaFountain, microbiology.
Anna Louise James was the only woman in her class at the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy and the first woman to graduate from that school in 1908. She became the first licensed woman pharmacist in Connecticut, and was among the first women to practice pharmacy in the country.
She was born in 1886, 21 years after the Civil War ended, the eighth of 11 children born to a former Virginia plantation slave who escaped from enslavement through the Underground Railroad.
After graduating from pharmacy school, she worked at a drug store in Hartford until 1911, then worked for her brother-in-law, Peter Lane, at his pharmacy, Lane Drug Store. In 1917, Lane turned over management of the drug store to James and renamed it James Pharmacy. The pharmacy closed when James retired 50 years later.
During the time she ran the pharmacy, James was reported to be altrustic, assisting underprivileged clients with prescriptions especially during the Great Depression, when many Americans struggled financially.
She was pioneering as an American citizen in other ways too, becoming one of the first women to register to vote after Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.