A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

Born in 1831 in Delaware, Rebecca Lee Crumpler was raised by an aunt who spent much of her time caring for sick people in the community. It might have been her early experiences with her ailing neighbors that inspired her to become a nurse, a job she held in Massachusetts from 1852 to 1860, when she enrolled in the New England Female Medical College with the help of the doctors she had worked under as a nurse. When she graduated, she became, not only the first African American to graduate from the New England Female Medical College but the first African American to become a licensed physician. Crumpler spent the majority of her career treating sick women and children in Richmond, Va. Few photographs or portraits of Crumpler have survived, and most of what we know about her comes from her the Book of Medical Discourses, which she published in 1883. It's one of the first medical texts written by a black person.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM. Only two more left!