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A black and white portrait of Dorothy Lavinia Brown, a Black woman with kinky hair tied back, wearing a white blouse.
Photograph of Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown.

Dr. Dorothy Brown graduates as the first Black female surgeon in the South.

1948

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Photograph of Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown.

Dr. Brown will go on to become the first single woman in Tennessee to win the legal right to become an adoptive parent in 1956, and the first Black woman elected to the Tennessee State Legislature a decade later.

While in the legislature, she will co-sponsor a bill expanding abortion rights, and while it will not successfully pass, it will shape future bills and conversations about the right to abortion.