Regina Marcia Benjamin (1956- )

August 11, 2009 
/ Contributed By: Shirley Ann Wilson Moore

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Regina Marcia Benjamin|

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Dr. Regina Marcia Benjamin, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General of the United States, is an accomplished physician whose professional and personal  roots are planted deeply in rural America. Dr. Benjamin was nominated for the post by the President on July 13, 2009 and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 29, 2009.

Dr. Benjamin was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1956 and grew up in nearby Daphne, Alabama. Her parents divorced when she was a child and her mother worked as a domestic and waitress to support Regina and her older brother.  Although the family owned land, financial necessity forced them to sell it.   She recalled that her family often fished in the Gulf of Mexico to catch their evening meal.

Despite her family’s poverty Regina Benjamin set her sights on college.  She enrolled in Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana where she met an African American physician for the first time.  This encounter persuaded her to pursue a career in medicine.  Earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Xavier in 1978, she then attended Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia between 1980 and 1982 but completed her medical degree at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Dr. Benjamin helped defray her educational expenses by joining the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) which reimbursed her tuition in exchange for a three-year commitment to practice in a medically underserved community.  After residency in central Georgia, she in 1987 settled in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a shrimping town of 2,500 along Alabama’s Gulf Coast near Daphne.  She became the only doctor serving the small, impoverished community there.

After fulfilling her three-year obligation to the NHSC, Dr. Benjamin remained in Bayou La Batre.  In 1990 she opened her own family practice, enrolled at Tulane University’s School of Business where she earned an MBA, and converted her practice into the Bayou La Batre Health Clinic. When the clinic was destroyed by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Benjamin continued to serve her patients, rebuilding after each storm.

Benjamin’s professional experience is equally impressive.  In 1995 she became the first woman and the first physician under age forty to be elected to the American Medical Association (AMA) Board of Trustees.  She was the sole American recipient of the 1998 Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.  In 2002 Dr. Benjamin became the first African American female president of a state medical society when she was elected President of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama (2002-2003).

In September 2008 she was one of 25 recipients of the “genius awards” given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Dr. Regina Benjamin held the post of U.S. Surgeon General from 2009 until her resignation on July 16, 2013.

Author Profile

Shirley Ann Wilson Moore received her Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. She is Professor Emerita of History at California State University, Sacramento where she taught undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars in American History, specializing in African American history, African American Western history, and the history of African American Western women. Her most recent book, Sweet Freedom’s Plains African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), won the 2018 Barbara Sudler Award for best non-fiction work on a western American subject authored by a woman. Her first book, To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963 (University of California Press, 2000), was the recipient of the Richmond Museum’s Historical Preservation Award, 2000. Her second book, co-edited with Quintard Taylor, African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), received the American Library Association’s CHOICE Award in 2004.

She is the author of numerous journal articles, essays, and book chapters including: “Anonymous Black Gold Seeker at Auburn Ravine, 1852,” Bulletin, California State Library, no. 128, November 2020;” “Passing,” Afterword to Robert Chandler’s Black and White: Lithographer and Painter Grafton Tyler Brown, (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014); “‘I Want It to Come Out Right,’” Forward to Rudolph M. Lapp’s Archy Lee: A California Fugitive Slave Case (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2008); ”No Cold Weather to Grapple With: African American Expectations of California, 1900-1950,” Journal of the West, vol. 44, no. 2, Spring 2005; “‘We Feel the Want of Protection: The Politics of Law and Race in California, 1848-1878,’” Taming the Elephant: Politics, Government and Law in Pioneer California,” John F. Burns and Richard J. Orsi, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press and the California Historical Society, 2003); “‘Your Life is Really Not Just Your Own’: African American Women in Twentieth Century California,” Seeking El Dorado; African Americans in California, 1769-1997, Lawrence De Graaf, Kevin Mulroy & Quintard Taylor, ed. (Los Angeles: Autry Museum and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); “‘Do You Think I’ll Lug Trunks?’” African Americans in Gold Rush California,” Kenneth Owens, ed., Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

She has served on advisory boards, boards of trustees, and professional committees including: Liberty Legacy Foundation Award Committee, Organization of American History (Chair, 2011-2012); Advisor, National Park Service Rosie the Riveter/Home Front Project (2004-2013); Caughy Prize Committee, Western History Association; Black Overland Trails Wagon Project (2009-2012); Billington Award Committee, Western History Association,(1999-2002); Joan Jensen-Darlis Miller Prize Committee, Western History Association (2000-2001); California Historical Society Board of Trustees(1990-1995); California Council for the Humanities (1996-1999).

Dr. Moore has served as a consultant and on-camera historian for documentary films including “African American Motoring: The Green Book,” Donner Memorial State Park, Laurence Campling, Producer/Director, 2017; “Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront National Historical Park,” (National Park Service), 2012; “Rising Above: Building the Indomitable City,” Laurence Campling, Producer/Director, (in partnership with the Center for Sacramento History and Historic Old Sacramento Foundation), 2011; “Meet Mary Ellen Pleasant: Mother of Civil Rights in California.” (Susheel Bibbs, Producer/Director, MEP Productions, broadcast on PBS), 2008; Disney Corporation, California Adventure Theme Park and “Golden Dreams” film (2000).

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Moore, S. (2009, August 11). Regina Marcia Benjamin (1956- ). BlackPast.org. https://new.blackpast.org/african-american-history/benjamin-regina-marcia-1956/

Source of the Author's Information:

Gardiner Harris, “A Doctor From the Bayou, New York Times, July 14,
2009; Rick Bragg, “Poor Town Finds an Angel in a White Coat,” New York
Times
, April 3, 1995; Ebony Magazine, March 1997, January 1998;
Catholic News Service, “Nation Called ‘Fortunate’ to Have Alabama
Physician as Obama Nominee,” News Briefs, July 13, 2009; The Catholic
Transcript Online
, July 14, 2009; http://www.answers.com/, “Black Biography: Regina
Benjamin Physician Personal Information.”

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