Mary R. McCarl typescript essay on Thomas M. Boulware

Item

Identifier: MSS 390

Content Description

The Mary R. McCarl typescript essay on Thomas M. Boulware was written in 1989 by Mary R. McCarl, Director of the Jefferson County Medical Society/University of Alabama at Birmingham Health Sciences Archives. This essay is based on Boulware’s oral history interview from 1987 and the collection of his papers, held at the Health Sciences Archives, and discusses the Maternity Clinic at the Slossfield Community Center from Boulware’s point of view.

Dates

27 April 1989

Creator

McCarl, Mary Rhinelander (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Thomas M. Boulware was born in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1903, and graduated from Washington University Medical School in 1926. His internship was at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and his residency was in obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt. Boulware moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1929, where he practiced at Carraway Methodist Church. In 1934, as a member of the staff of Hillman Hospital, he helped found the first board-certified obstetrics and gynecology program in Alabama. When the University of Alabama Medical School was founded in 1945, he became one of the first three faculty members in the Department of Obstetrics. Boulware held a clinical appointment at the Medical Center until the 1960s.

Boulware was well-known for his work with the poor and Black communities in Birmingham. He served on the maternal health committees of Jefferson County Medical Society and the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. In addition to helping establish the first maternity clinic for poor women at Hillman Hospital in 1935, Boulware ran the Maternity Clinic at the Slossfield Community Center from 1941 to 1948, and served on the staffs of Children’s Home Hospital and Holy Family Hospital, all of which chiefly treated the city’s poor African-American populations. Slossfield was unique in that it also offered Black physicians the opportunity to post-graduate training in obstetrics and gynecology, which was not available to them anywhere else in Alabama.

Although he stopped delivering babies in 1977, after an estimated 20,000 career deliveries, Boulware remained active in the health-care community in Birmingham. He served as an obstetric consultant for the Jefferson County Health Department until the mid-1980s when, after a sixty year career, Boulware finally retired. He died in Birmingham on June 4, 1991.

Extent

1 folder

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Overview

Thomas M. Boulware was born in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1903, and graduated from Washington University Medical School in 1926. Boulware was well-known for his work with the poor and Black communities in Birmingham. He served on the maternal health committees of Jefferson County Medical Society and the Medical Association of the State of Alabama.

In addition to helping establish the first maternity clinic for poor women at Hillman Hospital in 1935, Boulware ran the Maternity Clinic at the Slossfield Community Center from 1941 to 1948, and served on the staffs of Children’s Home Hospital and Holy Family Hospital, all of which chiefly treated the city’s poor African-American populations. He died in Birmingham on June 4, 1991.

The Mary R. McCarl typescript essay on Thomas M. Boulware was written in 1989 by Mary R. McCarl, Director of the Jefferson County Medical Society/University of Alabama at Birmingham Health Sciences Archives. This essay is based on Boulware’s oral history interview from 1987 and the collection of his papers, held at the Health Sciences Archives, and discusses the Maternity Clinic at the Slossfield Community Center from Boulware’s point of view.