N. Louise Young

Nellie Louise Young (June 7, 1907 – September 22, 1997) was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Maryland.

Early life and education Young was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Howard E. Young, Maryland's first African American pharmacist, and Estelle Hall Young.

Career Young initially served as an intern at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., after she was not accepted to the Provident Hospital in Baltimore due to the lack of housing accommodations for women.

Around the same time, she was appointed staff physician at the Maryland Training School for Girls, where she served from 1933 to 1940. Young also advocated for frank and practical sex education for girls.

Young believed that physicians should be free to choose their medical specialities "regardless of sex, race, color, and creed." Young's initial medical specialization was pediatrics, but after the death of an infant, she switched her specialization to gynecology. During that time, she became the only African American physician to receive training in birth control at the Baltimore Birth Control Clinic, where she was trained by Dr. Bessie Moses. With funding from the Baltimore Birth Control Clinic, Dr. Young opened a Planned Parenthood Clinic, located at 1523 McCulloh Street, which was one of only three such clinics then staffed entirely by African Americans in the entire United States in May 1938. After ten years at the clinic, Young was granted residency to specialize in ob-gyn at Provident Hospital, where she served as chief from 1950 to 1963. She worked at several area hospitals, often integrating the staff, until her retirement in 1984 after fifty-two years of practicing medicine.