Mary E. Britton

Mary Ellen Britton (1855–1925) was an American physician, educator, suffragist, journalist and civil rights activist from Lexington, Kentucky. Britton was an original member of the Kentucky Negro Education Association, which formed in 1877. She was president of the Lexington Woman's Improvement Club and later served as a charter member of the Ladies Orphan Society which founded the Colored Orphan Industrial Home in Lexington, in 1892. During her lifetime she accomplished many things through the obstacles she faced. After teaching black children in Lexington public schools, she worked as a doctor from her home in Lexington. She specialized in hydrotherapy, electrotherapy and massage; and, she was officially granted her license to practice medicine in Lexington, Kentucky in 1902, making her the first woman doctor to be licensed in Lexington.

Background and early life

Public art portray of Britton located at the intersection of Third St, and Elm Tree Lane in Lexington KY. Mary Ellen Britton was born as a free person of color on April 5, 1855, the only one of her siblings for whom a record of birth can be located. She was one of seven children of Laura and Henry Britton who lived on Mill Street, somewhere between Second and Third Streets which is now in the Gratz Park Historical District of Lexington, Kentucky. Contrary to the limited opportunities many other African-Americans of the time were allowed, she and her siblings—Susan J. (born 1850), Julia (born 1852), Joseph (also known as Josiah, born 1856), Robert H. (born 1857), Martha (born 1860), William (born 1867) and Hattie (born 1868), Lucy (born ca. 1872), and Thomas Marshall (born 1873) — all acquired a classical education. Her father Henry was a freeborn carpenter (born around 1824) of Spanish/Indian heritage who later became a barber in Lexington and Berea. Her mother, Laura Trigg, was a gifted singer and musician who had been well-educated under the protection of her mother who was an enslaved mistress to Kentucky statesman Thomas F. Marshall. Laura had been emancipated at the age of sixteen.

At a young age Britton was offered the best education possible for African American children in that time - attending private schools created out of subscriptions from Lexington's African-American professional class. In 1859, along with older sister Julia Britton Hooks (later known as a gifted musician and educator, as well as Berea's first African American teacher), Britton attended a branch school in Lexington started by Mr. William H. Gibson of Louisville, Kentucky. The family later moved to Berea, Kentucky where Laura Britton was hired as a matron at Berea College. and ending in August 1897.

Professional career After leaving Berea, Britton taught in several schools in central Kentucky and advocated for the improvement of pedagogy in African-American schools. Her paper entitled "Literary Culture of the Teacher" was presented at the second meeting of the Kentucky Negro Education Association (KNEA) in Louisville in 1879. At the Ninth Annual Convention of the KNEA in Danville, she gave two speeches, the second of which (on July 6, 1887), she spoke out on behalf of woman suffrage. In her speech, which later was published as "Woman's Suffrage: A Potent Agency in Public Reform," she argued that women, like men, had a right to define their own fate within the laws of the land, and that laws should be equally applied to both women and men. In 1894 she presented "History and Science of Teaching" before the American Association of Educators of Colored Youth in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1893 Britton tested whether the grand "White City" in Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was open to blacks. African-American participation in the exhibits had been very limited, leading to calls for protests. According to Karen Cotton McDaniel, Britton was curious if the Kentucky building in the Exposition would allow her entrance. Her open defiance of white supremacy at the door of the Kentucky exhibit—and subsequent "humiliation, indignation and other strains she experienced" was highly publicized. She was also President of the Lexington Woman's Improvement Club. The initial goal for this club was the "elevation of women, the enriching and betterment of home, and the encitement of proper pride and interest in race." For many years, the Club managed a Day Nursery for the children of working mothers.

Her writings on moral and social reform can be found in local newspapers such as the Lexington American Citizen and the Lexington Daily Transcript—she wrote a regular women's column in the Lexington Herald (signed "Meb"). She also wrote for the Cleveland Gazette, the Indianapolis World, the Baltimore Ivy and the American Catholic Tribune in Cincinnati. Lucy had married Will F. "Monk" Overton (a jockey whose career was also overturned by Jim Crow), but died in her early thirties from acute nephritis. In 1914 the eldest sister, Susan who was the wife of a prominent African-American barber in Lexington named Benjamin Franklin, died. Dr. Britton retired from her medical practice at the age of 68 in 1923.