Susan Maria McKinney Steward was an American physician and author. She was the third African-American woman to earn a medical degree, and the first in New York state. McKinney-Steward's medical career focused on prenatal care and childhood disease. From 1870 to 1895, she ran her own practice in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She sat on the board and practiced medicine at the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People. From 1906 she worked as college physician at the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1911 she attended the Universal Race Congress in New York, where she delivered a paper entitled "Colored American Women".
Biography
McKinney-Steward was born Susan Maria Smith to Anne and Sylvanus Smith, in Weeksville, now Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Her sister Sarah J. Garnet was the first African-American female school principal in the New York City public school system. She played the organ at Siloam Presbyterian Church and the Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. McKinney-Steward was motivated to enter medicine after the death of her brother in the Civil War and the 1866 cholera epidemic that affected Brooklyn. Although McKinney's father was a wealthy pig farmer, she used money earned from teaching music in Washington, D.C. and New York City to fund her medical school education. In 1867, she attended the New York Medical College for Women and graduated as valedictorian in 1869. McKinney-Steward's medical career focused on prenatal care and childhood disease where she worked with patients of all races. From 1870 to 1895, she ran her own practice in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She sat on the board of and practiced medicine at the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People. In 1871 she was married to Reverend William G. McKinney from South Carolina. They had two children and he died in 1894. In 1896 she remarried to United States ArmyBuffalo Soldier and chaplain, Theophilus Gould Steward. She moved with him to Montana, Nebraska and Texas. By 1906 both found positions at the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Wilberforce University in Ohio, where she worked as college physician. They then had another child. In 1911 she attended the Universal Race Congress in London, where she delivered a paper entitled "Colored American Women". She died at Wilberforce University. She was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
