In the smoky heart of industrial-era Pittsburgh, as soot-darkened skies signaled the city’s booming promise, a young African American man named John Paul Golden quietly made history. In 1888, Golden graduated from the Western Pennsylvania Medical College, becoming the first Black person to ear n a medical degree from the institution that would become the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He would go on to serve communities across lines of race, geography and class, forging a career that reflected not only his intellect and compassion — but the enduring possibility of what medicine, education and grit could achieve. Golden, perhaps, lived in the shadows of other famous figures, but today newspaper clippings, public records, bank documents, city directories, independent research and conversations with historians can shine a light on his remarkable life.  Born in 1863 in Pittsburgh, John Paul Golden was the son of Samuel Golden, a man legendary in local Black history. Samuel, originally from Baltimore, had arrived in Pittsburgh in 1845 and worked for more than 50 years as a porter at the prestigious Monongahela House Hotel, where he served presidents and foreign dignitaries. Though Samuel could not write his name, he built a real estate empire, eventually becoming the city’s wealthiest Black resident. His death in 1905 at age 99 made headlines in the Pittsburg Press; he left a fortune worth more than $1 million in today’s currency, gifting homes and land to his children, including John Paul. Pittsburgh’s Dollar Bank has accounting records of some of its earliest clients, which include many of the area’s professional and working-class Black Pittsburghers. Dorothy Spangler, an archivist with the bank, has spent years curating the collection. Some of what she’s found led to information that fleshes out Golden’s early years.  The Goldens lived at 140 Fulton St., in Allegheny City, where John Paul grew up surrounded by the thriving, tight-knit Black professional class that was beginning to take root in Pittsburgh. He attended a segregated school that emphasized music and the arts. His early education likely placed him in classrooms led by pioneering Black educators like Martha Bell, a mixed-race teacher whose own fight for inheritance had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. His studies connected him to a deep-rooted network of civic-minded Black Pittsburghers, including the founders of the Hill District’s politically active Bethel AME Church, Avery College, a private school for African Americans and the Woodson family, reputed descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  Golden’s academic trajectory is closely tied to the roots of the University of Pittsburgh. He took classes at a preparatory school connected to the Western University of Pennsylvania (WUP) — Pitt’s predecessor. As early as 1882, he enrolled at WUP and studied there during the same era as the sons of the Mellon and Thaw families, the early business and civic leaders of Pittsburgh. At WUP, Golden took courses in the scientific course of study, which included algebra, trigonometry, German, zoology and natural history. Though he appears not to have earned a degree from WUP, archive material listed him among its students and later among the 32 graduates of the Western Pennsylvania Medical College’s second graduating class in 1888. The Pittsburgh College of Medicine was a latecomer, founded in 1886—more than a century after Harvard and other eastern institutions. Yet from the start, from its campus on Polish Hill, it embraced the new revolution in medicine: hands-on laboratory work, clinical clerkships and evidence-based problem-solving. Golden was among the first to benefit from this shift, gaining training that was cutting edge for its time. Faculty were drawn from nearby West Penn Hospital, and Golden probably took the trolley from Allegheny City to attend lectures and observe surgeries alongside his peers. His coursework included chemistry, pathology, diseases of women and microscopy. The curriculum reflected the industrial city’s health crises — venereal disease, typhoid, cholera and nervous disorders. Admission standards were modest: A high school diploma or normal school education sufficed, making Golden’s previous studies at the preparatory school on Federal Street ample preparation.  Classes were rigorous—14 lectures per week in anatomy, surgery, pathology and microscopy. Tuition was $100 per semester. After graduating and paying $1 for his medical license, Golden opened his first practice at 37 James St. in Allegheny City, at what is now the corner of Foreland and James Street, site of the former James Street Tavern. 422 Foreland St., on Pittsburgh’s North Side, the site of Dr. Golden’s first medical practice. A doctor for the city Golden’s career flourished. Fluent in seven languages, he served a racially and ethnically diverse clientele, particularly the city’s German and Scotch-Irish immigrant community. His education at Pitt equipped him to practice medicine at the highest level. He transcended the period’s racial assumptions that Black physicians could only – and should only – care for Black patients. Golden refused such limitations.  When he began his medical studies and practice, there were formal and informal constraints on medical trainees, said Kristen Ehrenberger, a physician and medical historian with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Pitt’s School of Medicine, who’s also associated with the C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society.   “Speaking specifically about the United States,” she said, “the ideal candidate was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man. So, if you were a woman, if you were Jewish or if you were Black, you were not considered an ideal candidate for medical school.” Golden overcame these barriers to build institutions and provide care to communities in need. Within a month of graduation, he opened an account at Dollar Bank, depositing regularly — sometimes up to $500 a month, the equivalent of $24,000 today. His financial success and commitment to service placed him among the city’s rising Black professional class. According to Spangler’s research, Golden and his wife, Frances “Fannie” Burgin Golden, never had biological children, but welcomed a young neighborhood boy named William Henry Butler into their home after the child’s Civil War veteran father died. Golden later helped young Butler open his own savings account — a rare financial milestone for an African American child in the 1890s. Golden’s civic life was expansive. He was a member of Central Baptist Church and the Afro-American Republican League. He helped to found what would become the National Medical Association, today the largest professional organization for African American physicians. He was an advocate for Black women in nursing and proposed that medical societies focus not just on science, but also on professional fraternity and ethical practice. A Southern chapter In 1898, Golden surprised many by leaving his successful North Side practice to move South. An article from that year in the Pittsburg Press quoted him: “I became immediately enamored,” he said of South Carolina, where the post-Reconstruction climate promised opportunity for Black professionals. He settled in Georgetown, a majority-Black town that he called “the Negro paradise in America.”  Steve Williams is an African American public historian in South Carolina who focuses on regional narratives. He said that Golden came into South Carolina at a promising moment.  “After the Civil War,” said Williams, “there was a climate of possibility. There was integration; South Carolina was a place of expanding professional and political opportunities for African Americans. There were African Americans teaching at the state university. Blacks would have been able to develop medical practices.” Image from the Manning Times, a South Carolina paper, on Dec. 17, 1913. In South Carolina, Golden practiced medicine, ran a pharmacy and engaged in civic life. Newspaper clippings list him as a trustee at Trinity AME Church, a U.S. examining surgeon, having received commissioned from U.S. public health service to diagnose and treat patients, and was a featured speaker in literary programs. Georgetown and nearby Clarendon County offered the kind of professional independence and racial equity that seemed within reach — at least temporarily — in the South’s pockets of postwar optimism. Golden returned to Pittsburgh with Fannie in 1913. Three years later, he reopened his practice in a two-story brick building at 2229 Centre Ave., in the heart of the Hill District. They lived nearby on Junilla Street. He continued to serve until his death in 1920. His wife, Fannie, was a pioneer in her own right — a founding member of the Aurora Reading Club, one of the city’s earliest Black women’s literary groups dedicated to advancing education and culture. Together, the Goldens symbolized a family devoted to community uplift. More than a century later, Golden’s life and career serve as a window into the early history of medical education at Pitt, the emergence of the city’s Black professional class, and the enduring belief that access to knowledge has the power to transform individuals and the communities they serve.  Today, his story is being rediscovered—thanks to historians, archivists, physicians and a bank ledger signed simply, and proudly: John Paul Golden, M.D. The post John Paul Golden was Pittsburgh’s pioneering Black physician appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh. ...read more read less