Joyce Yerwood

Ursula Joyce Yerwood (January 1909 – October 2, 1987) was the first female African American physician in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and founder of the Yerwood Center, the first community center for African Americans in Stamford, Connecticut.

Biography

Early life Joyce Yerwood was born in Victoria, Texas, to Melissa Brown Yerwood and Charles Yerwood. Melissa Yerwood was a teacher and died shortly after Yerwood's birth. Charles Yerwood was a physician, one of fewer than twenty African American physicians in Texas. Charles Yerwood brought Joyce and her sister Connie with him on house calls, which inspired both of them to study medicine. Charles later remarried Ada Simond, who became Joyce's stepmother.

Education Yerwood attended the Eliza Dee Home, a finishing school for African American girls. She graduated from Samuel Huston College, in Austin, Texas, in 1928. With her sister, Connie, Yerwood went on to study at Meharry Medical College, in Nashville, Tennessee, where they were the only two female students in their first year. Over the course of her career, she delivered over 2,000 babies.

Yerwood served as the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Union Baptist Church. With her husband, she helped found the Greenwich Chapter of the NAACP. She was also a member of Eastern Star, Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the Girl Friends, Inc., the Soroptimists Club, the Stamford Medical Society, the National Medical Association, the Stamford Hospital Corporation, and the World Medical Association.

Over the course of her life, Yerwood received the Stamford Mayor's Award, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Heritage Award, and the Hannah G. Solomon Award.

Yerwood was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2016.