Dr. Easterling

Dr. Ruth Marguerite Easterling entered Tufts College Medical School in 1917, at the age of 19 she was one of two women in her class and one of the first black women to be admitted. After completing her internship at Metropolitan Hospital in New York she began her career as a pathologist. Dr. Easternling’s career included private practice, serving on the staff of Tuskegee Veterans Hospital in Alabama, and affiliation with Harvard laboratories and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

Among her professional accomplishments was her work with Dr. William Augustus Hinton, who in 1927 perfected the Hinton test for syphilis. Dr. Easterling also conducted tuberculosis research with Dr. Hinton and Dr. John B. West. Their findings were published in 1939.

Ruth Marguerite Easterling was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1898, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. James David Easterling. As a child, she moved with her family to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived most of her life. Educated at the Ellis Grammar School and Cambridge High and Latin School, from which she graduated with honors, she attended Jackson College, the women's coordinate college to Tufts in nearby Medford, studying a pre-medical curriculum.

After graduating on June 10, 1921, Dr. Easterling moved to New York, where she interned at Metropolitan Hospital, a municipal facility on Welfare Island. The hospital was largely staffed by the faculty of New York Medical College, which had a reputation for training superb clinicians and scholars.

Dr. Easterling completed her internship at Metropolitan Hospital in 1922 and began her career as a pathologist. She was affiliated with the Harvard laboratories and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and worked with Dr. William Augustus Hinton, the son of freed slaves, who in 1927 perfected the Hinton test for syphilis. The Hinton test replaced the Wasserman test as the most accurate blood serum test for syphilis. Dr. Hinton assisted with tuberculosis research that Dr. Easterling conducted with Dr. John B. West. Their findings were published in 1939.

Dr. Easterling moved south for a time, serving on the staff of the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. She returned to Cambridge to assume the position of director of the laboratories at the Cambridge Massachusetts City Hospital.

Dr. Easterling died of breast cancer at Cambridge City Hospital in 1943 at the age of 45. She is memorialized by a scholarship for minority students established in her name at her alma mater, Tufts University.

In 1979 the Progressive Alliance of Minority Students at Tufts University School of Medicine established the Dr. Ruth M. Easterling Scholarship, which honors Dr. Easterling's accomplishments and helps minority students finance their medical education. Her portrait, dedicated to Tufts University School of Medicine in 1980, hangs in the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. More than eighty years after her graduation from the Medical School of Tufts College, Dr. Easterling continues to serve as an inspiration to those who follow.

Sources: Project Impact (Increase Minority Participation and Awareness of Clinical Trials, National Medical Association; Changing the Face of Medicine, usa.gov