Ernest Mae McCarroll

Ernest Mae McCarroll (November 29, 1898 – 1990), a physician in New Jersey, was one of the United States' first African American physicians. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, though her education took her through several cities and states. In 1929 she began to practice in New Jersey, where she became the first African American appointed to the Medical Staff at the Newark City Hospital.

McCarroll was a member of many different organizations, both medical and otherwise, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the League of Women Voters, and the National Medical Association, where she was given the title "first lady".

Early life and education McCarroll was born in Birmingham, Alabama to Mary and Ernest McCarroll. Her father was a mail carrier. She was the fourth of their six children.

Medical career After completing her internship in Kansas City, Missouri at the General Hospital No. 2, she started her career in general practice in Philadelphia in 1927. Following her marriage to dentist LeRoy Baxter in 1929, she moved her practice to Newark, New Jersey.

Activism McCarroll heralded the effort to end sexually transmitted infections during the early days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, when Thomas Parran Jr., notorious for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, was the Surgeon General of the United States' Public Health Service.

She joined the National Medical Association in 1929 and held multiple positions throughout her career, such as a member of the Board of Trustees for the organization's academic journal (1949-1955 and 1963-1973) and a chairman of the Committee on General Practitioner of the Year Award (from its inception 1955-1968) and the Publication Committee for 32 years. She performed several other services for the organization and was named "First Lady of the NMA".

McCarroll worked on state and local levels as president of the New Jersey Medical Society and the New Jersey State Medical Association. In addition, she was a member of the Essex County Medical Society, the State Medical Association of New Jersey, the American Medical Association, the American Venereal Disease Association, and the American Public Health Association. She also served as the president of the North Jersey Medical Association and the New Jersey Medical Society while medical organization in the south and in Washington, D.C. still barred African Americans.

She also was active as a board member of the Newark branch of the NAACP, the Union League of Essex County, and the Full Neighborhood Guild. She organized the Neighborhood Guild and was a member of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, the Bethany Baptist Church, the League of Women Voters, the Daughters of Elks, and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She was a member and fieldworker of the Planned Parenthood Association of New Jersey.

Honors The North Jersey Medical Society awarded her a plaque in 1955 as its first "General Practitioner of the Year".

In July 1963, she became the first female physician whose picture appeared on the cover of the NMA Journal. At the time, the journal typically only showed recently retired or deceased, but they added her picture to honor her services. Slightly over a decade later, on August 14, 1973, the organization presented her a plaque reading: "In recognition of her dedicated involvement in the affairs of the National Medical Association—Its Publication Committee and Board of Trustees."

The city of Newark named the Department of Health building in her honor: the Haskins/McCarroll Building.