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History: The University of Arkansas Black Experience Celebration: The Silas Hunt Legacy Award Event Profiles of Recipients Snapshot: University of Arkansas |
Home: Profiles of Recipients: Dr. Edith Irby Jones Dr. Edith Irby Jones (BSM '52, MD '52)
Jones received her medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 1952, earning the distinction of being the first black graduate from what was then called the University of Arkansas School of Medicine. She was elected the first female president of the National Medical Association and was the first black woman resident at an all white school, the Baylor College of Medicine Affiliated Hospitals. In 1962, Dr. Jones set up a private practice in inner-city Houston.
Jones is currently chief of the medical staff at Riverside General Hospital in Houston, Texas. She has been honored time and again for her leadership, voluntarism, service, and philanthropy. She was named a distinguished alumna of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and holds honorary doctorates from Missouri Valley College, Mary Holmes College, and Knoxville College. She has been honored as a “Living Legend” by the Joseph Henry Tyler Branch of the National Medical Association, was recognized among the “Most Influential People of 1986” by Ebony magazine, and was inducted into the UAMS Hall of Fame in 2004.. |
Dr.
Edith Irby Jones of Houston, Texas, has devoted the majority of
her life to helping others. She has used her education and abilities
to help people in small communities, large cities, and foreign countries.
Jones
has devoted much time and her personal resources to help those in
need. She founded the Edith Irby Jones Foundation to fund scholarships
for the needy. She established and supports a clinic in Veracruz,
Mexico. After a visit to Haiti in which she saw the impoverished
living, medical, and sanitary conditions of the people, she helped
provide funds not only to set up a clinic for the poor, but also
to work with a landowner to acquire 40 acres of property on which
fresh water wells were drilled. She is a charter member of Physicians
for Human Rights, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.