FEATURE
META L.CHRISTY, DO THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN OSTEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN by Carol Benenson Perloff
O
n July 4, 1912, a boxing match between Jack Johnson and Jim Flynn attracted trains full of spectators to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Making that journey was a young Black man from Kokomo, Indiana, who became enthralled with Las Vegas and relocated there. The city, which predated the Nevada resort of the same name by 70 years, had a small African American community, but no physician to care for them. LaRoy Oran Christy eventually convinced his sister to leave Indiana and set up a medical practice in New Mexico. Meta L. Christy, DO, a 1921 graduate of Philadelphia College of Infirmary and Osteopathy (PCIO), later Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, would dedicate nearly four decades to serving this community and advancing the osteopathic profession in the Southwest. Born in 1895, the future osteopathic physician was the daughter of a schoolteacher and a dressmaker, descendants of free African Americans who settled in Salem, Indiana, from Newberry, South Carolina, in the 1820s. Dr. Christy was one of John and Arminda Christy’s six children, three of whom died by 1900. At age 7, she lost her 18-year-old brother Harley, who died of epilepsy at the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth, and, at age 10, her father. Dr. Christy herself suffered from 12
PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE
extended periods of illness in her early 20s. Perhaps all the sickness and loss she experienced inspired her to become a doctor. In 1917, Dr. Christy began her medical education at the Massachusetts College of Osteopathy (MCO) in Boston, where she spent at least two years before transferring to PCIO. At the time, MCO was still reeling from a scandal that had made national news—a “triangle tragedy” of murder and suicide among the faculty. MCO was also running into accreditation issues with the American Osteopathic Association, being the only college to refuse the AOA’s right to inspect and classify the colleges. (The AOA placed MCO on probation in 1920 and ultimately rescinded its accreditation in 1926.) Jennifer Weber, exhibits manager at the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, hypothesizes, “Dr. Christy would have realized that her credentials would be questioned and if MCO had a poor reputation and was in poor standing with the AOA it might put her reputation at risk having a degree from the institution.” The Kokomo Tribune mentioned Dr. Christy attending MCO and spending vacation with her mother, Arminda, in the summer of 1919, so it is unclear whether she transferred to PCIO in the fall of 1919 for her third year, or in 1920 in time for her fourth year. Regardless, she arrived
