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2073
Jocelyn Elders (b. 1933)
Minnie Jones, the eldest of eight children, grew up in a rural, segregated, poverty-stricken region of Arkansas. Her parents were sharecroppers, and she worked in cotton fields starting at age 5. She often had to miss months of school in the fall when it was harvest time, but she still excelled at academics, earning a scholarship to attend the all-Black liberal arts Philander Smith College in Little Rock, where she changed her name to Jocelyn.
When she heard a speech by Edith Irby Jones, the first African American to be accepted as a nonsegregated student at the University of Arkansas Medical School, she was inspired to become a doctor. After three years’ service in the U.S. Army, she attended medical school on the GI Bill, where she met her husband Oliver Elders. Dr. Elders went on to become the first board-certified pediatric endocrinologist in the state of Arkansas, in 1978.
From 1987 to 1992, Elders served as the head of the Arkansas Department of Health under then governor Bill Clinton. When Clinton was elected president in 1993, he appointed Elders as U.S. surgeon general, the first Black and second woman to hold that post. She became a controversial leader because of her willingness to frankly discuss issues such as drug legalization, in-school distribution of contraception, and healthy human sexuality. In the midst of this controversy, Elders was asked by the administration to resign in 1994.
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