Dr. M.B. Lucas

Mrs. Marie B Lucas, M.D., from the Howard University Medical College, class of 1914, has been announced by the District of Columbia Board of Medical Examiners as having passed with credit the examination held by them last month for license to practice medicine in the District. There is probably no graduate of this year's classes of Howard in whom the people of Washington are more deeply or more lovingly interested than in this rare example of true and courageous womanhood.

Dr, Lucas was formerly a Washington public school teacher. She has the distinction of being the only woman to graduate from the Medical Department this year. Her record during the four years course was among the highest; and last year she was awarded the Perry prize in pediatrics. She is the wife of M. Grant Lucas, Principal of the Bruce School, Washington. Their only son, Frank V Lucas, has been promoted to the third-year class of the M Street High School.

FYI: The Bruce School was erected in 1898 in what was then a wealthy, upper-middle class suburb with a large black population. The eight-room school was designed by William M. Poindexter, a prominent Washington architect in private practice working for the Office of the Building Inspector. The school’s namesake, Blanche Kelso Bruce, born enslaved, and the first black to serve a full term in the United States Senate during Reconstruction (1875-1881). A member of Washington, D.C.’s black aristocracy, he held other public offices including Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C. Naming the school in Bruce’s honor reflected the optimism of the time that African Americans could achieve a high status in society through education. The school was closed in 1973 after the new Bruce Monroe school was built and was returned to the District of Columbia government which currently owns it.

Source: The Crisis Magazine, Nov. 1914 issue