Lulu Fleming: Medical Missionary

Lulu (Louise Celestia) Fleming (1862-1899), the daughter of a slave and Civil War veteran, valedictorian of her class at Shaw University, became the first Black person appointed a career missionary by the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society of the West. She sailed for Africa in 1887; then, while in the States to recover her health, she received a degree in 1895 from the Pennsylvania Woman’s Medical College. She returned to Africa, and for the remainder of her brief life was a pioneer medical missionary in the Congo.