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Although early record do not indicate race, it is clear that black
students attended UB before the turn of the century. Joseph Robert
Love (1839-1914) was described in a newspaper article about the
1880 commencement as an Episcopal clergyman who studied medicine as "an
auxiliary to his ministerial calling" and was identified then as UB's
first black graduate. His intention was "to undertake under Bishop Holly
of the Island of Hayti, West Indies, the introductions of the church in
San Domingo," according to the commencement article. Love's later writing
exerted an important influence on Jamaican history, it was indicated. Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette, (1859-1897) a member of the class of 1882, was the second African American to receive a degree from UB. He was Booker T. Washington's physician and often was mentioned by Washington in speeches as an example of black perseverance and initiative. Born into slavery in North Carolina, Dorsette was separated from his mother at two months of age. He was raised by his grandmother and graduated from the Hampton Institute in 1878. Failing health forced him to resign from the Medical College at Syracuse. After regaining his health and being rejected by the University Medical College of New York City because of his race, he came to UB and completed his degree. He helped organize the National Medical Association for black physicians and was a trustee at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which Booker T. Washington built from a small normal school into a nationally known institute with 1,500 students. Other early medical school grads: Frank L. Watkins, who came to UB from Montgomery, Alabama, graduated from the medical school in 1891, and died in Buffalo in 1921. Henry Harrison Lewis, class of 1918, a member of the university's first class in the College of Arts and Sciences before he transferred to the medical school. Best known locally is W. Yerby Jones (1904-1979) a graduate of the medical school class of 1924, who lived in Buffalo for 50 years. A prominent ophthalmologist, Jones served a chief of staff of the former Meyer Memorial Hospital. Mary B. Talbert, for whom UB's Talbert Hall is named, was a native of Ohio who graduated from Oberlin College in 1885, married a Buffalo bookkeeper and spent most of her life here. Active in local and national organizations, she was chairman of the executive board and then president of the National Association of Colored Women and vice president of the NAACP. In 1922, a year before her death, she received the Springarn Medal from the NAACP.
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