Black History Is: Solomon Carter Fuller

Solomon Carter Fuller is known as the first African American psychiatrist in the United States.

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Solomon Carter Fuller is widely recognized as the first African American psychiatrist in the United States. Born in Liberia, Fuller traveled to the United States at age 17 to study medicine, obtaining his MD at Boston University School of Medicine in 1897. Fuller moved to Germany in 1904 after being selected by Alois Alzheimer to work as one of five laboratory assistants at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Munich. There, Fuller began studying patients with dementia symptoms later known as “Alzhiemer’s disease.” Upon returning to the U.S., Fuller continued documenting the neuropathology of dementias.

In 1912, Fuller published what is now known as the first comprehensive review of Alzheimer's disease, which included the first English translation of the case of the first person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and information detailing brain atrophies, arteriosclerosis, extensive plaques, and intracellular "Alzheimer’s degeneration” — reflective of neurofibrillary tangles. In 1919, he became associate professor at Boston University. Despite being paid less than his fellow white professors and not formally acknowledged on the university's payroll, he acted as chair of the Department of Neurology from 1928 to 1933. He retired in 1933 after a junior white assistant professor was promoted to full professorship and appointed the official departmental chair. Fuller then continued to practice neurology and psychiatry in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and later recruited, staffed, and trained Black physicians in psychiatry at Tuskegee Veterans Administration Hospital in Alabama.

Design by Adrienne Tong.

Image by Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

About the Author

Cyrenna Cooper

Cyrenna Cooper is the Web Communications Specialist for BrainFacts.org. She graduated from George Mason University in 2017 with a degree in Communications.