David Wellington Byrd (1 November 1868–6 July 1945), physician, was born in Ashland, Ohio, the son of North Carolina natives James F. Byrd and Mary Anna Henderson Byrd. He attended public schools in Ashland and in 1886 entered Baldwin College (later Baldwin-Wallace College) in Berea, Ohio. Baldwin was a coeducational institution that had admitted a few African American students before Byrd. He went there on the recommendation of Joseph E. Stubbs, superintendent of the Ashland public schools before assuming the presidency of the college in 1886. Byrd helped defray his college expenses by tutoring pupils in Latin. He graduated with an A.B. in 1888 and later received an M.A.
Byrd taught for two years in the Ashland public schools and then moved to Rust University (later Rust College) in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he taught Greek and Latin for four years. In 1892 he became professor of Greek at Central Tennessee College (Walden University from 1901) in Nashville, an institution for African Americans founded by the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Several years later he became dean of Central Tennessee's literary department. During Byrd's tenure the college was in poor fiscal health and uncertain about its mission and future. Its president also doubted the value to students of the ancient languages. The school's one viable section was its Meharry Medical Department, which survived the demise of Walden University and became Meharry Medical College. Byrd entered Meharry's freshman medical class in 1897 and obtained an M.D. in 1900, completing the standard four-year course in three years. Two years later he won Meharry's certification as a Ph.C., or pharmaceutical chemist. Byrd served on the medical faculty as instructor in medical chemistry from 1900 to 1904.
From 1904 until his death Byrd practiced medicine in Norfolk. He was active in both the National Medical Association, which he helped found, and the Old Dominion Medical Society—the Black counterparts, respectively, of the American Medical Association and the Medical Society of Virginia. A longtime chairman of the executive committee of the Old Dominion Medical Society, Byrd served as president of the National Medical Association for the 1917–1918 term. Like other African Americans in Virginia and elsewhere, he was excluded from membership in white professional organizations. At a 1940 conference of the Old Dominion Medical Society, Byrd led a campaign to reject an offer by the all-white Medical Society of Virginia to extend restricted privileges to Black physicians. After studying the question of interracial cooperation the Medical Society of Virginia had concluded to leave the status quo intact while urging white doctors to "extend to the colored doctors of their respective communities every favor that is reasonable." Byrd's successful opposition to the proposal helped keep pressure on the white group to admit Black professionals to full membership in the society.
One of Byrd's major clinical concerns was the prevention and treatment of venereal disease. His interest in the subject, initially sparked by the death of a young male patient from syphilis, soon broadened into a public health mission. In 1916 Byrd headed a lively discussion on "Obscure Syphilis" at a meeting of the Old Dominion Medical Society. He published papers on the subject in 1917 and 1922 in the Journal of the National Medical Association. Early in the 1930s Byrd established and became director of the Norfolk Public Clinic, reportedly the nation's first treatment center devoted to venereal disease. In 1936 the National Medical Association became the first national organization to endorse the syphilis control program of the United States Public Health Service, and it appointed Byrd to head its Commission on the Eradication of Syphilis. Byrd spoke in January 1937 at the first National Conference on Venereal Disease Control and impressed the surgeon general of the United States with his passionate commitment to solving this devastating health problem. Byrd also testified before a United States Senate subcommittee in behalf of a $3 million appropriation for venereal disease prevention.
Byrd and his colleagues in the National Medical Association perceived syphilis as a major national health concern that crossed class and race lines and opposed the stereotyping of the disease as predominantly a "Negro problem." In 1939, for example, they prevailed on the editor of a medical text to retract a statement that gonorrhea in children "is most commonly received from toilet seats soiled by infected members of the household, such as colored maids." Although Byrd worked closely with the Public Health Service, he may have been unaware of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which from 1932 to 1972 deliberately withheld treatment from a test group of African American men known to be suffering from syphilis. Judging by his principled stands on other matters, Byrd would almost certainly have been outraged.
Byrd served on the staff of Norfolk Community Hospital and belonged to Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Hiawatha Social Club, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Hunton branch of the Young Men's Christian Association. A trustee of Saint John's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Norfolk, he represented the church as an elder at the Virginia Annual Conference. At Durham in 1942 Byrd attended the initial meeting of the Southern Conference on Race Relations. He was among the local leaders who helped found the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College (later Norfolk State University).
On 15 August 1899 Byrd married Wilhelmina Mitchell, who became a pioneer in the Young Women's Christian Association movement in Norfolk and served a term as president of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Medical Association. They had two daughters. David Wellington Byrd died of a coronary occlusion at his home in Norfolk on 6 July 1945 and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Norfolk.
Sources Consulted:
Who's Who in Colored America 1 (1927): 33, 2 (1928/1929): 64–65 (portrait), 3 (1930/1932): 77, 5 (1938/1940): 93, 98, 6 (1941/1944): 93, 97; Vivian Ovelton Sammons, Blacks in Science and Medicine (1990), 44; Baldwin-Wallace College Bulletin 10 (Dec. 1924); Journal of the National Medical Association 8 (1916): 172, 190–191; Norfolk Journal and Guide, 23 Nov. 1940 (portrait); Thomas Parran, Shadow on the Land: Syphilis (1937), 178–181; Albert L. Hinton, "Fighting Syphilis," Crisis 45 (1938): 138–139, 146; Byrd's major papers are in Journal of the National Medical Association, including "Some Considerations in a Study of Vascular Tension," 6 (1914): 226–227, "Maternity and Infant Mortality," 9 (1917): 177–180, "Syphilis of the Respiratory Tract and Lungs," 14 (1922): 84–86, "Therapeutic Notes," 29 (1937): 172, "An Appeal to the Women of America to Help Stamp Out Congenital Syphilis," 31 (1939): 127–128, "Report of N.M.A. Commission on Eradication and Prevention of Syphilis," 31 (1939): 270–271, and "Norfolk Public Clinics," 34 (1942): 39–40; venereal disease work and opposition to 1940 Medical Society of Virginia proposal documented in Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives, box 152, folder 7, box 214, folder 11, and box 215, folders 1–2 (second quotation), 4, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.; Virginia Medical Monthly 67 (1940): 177–178, 571–572 (first quotation on 571); obituaries and memorials in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7 July 1945, Norfolk Journal and Guide, 14 July 1945, Journal of the American Medical Association 129 (1945): 527, Journal of the National Medical Association 37 (1945): 206, and Baldwin-Wallace Alumnus (Nov. 1945): 14.
Photograph courtesy of Calvert Brothers Studio Glass Plate Negatives, No. 39949, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Kenneth R. Manning.
How to cite this page:
Kenneth R. Manning, "David Wellington Byrd (1868–1945)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Byrd_David_Wellington, accessed [today's date]).
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