Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson

Johnson was born Halle Tanner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the oldest daughter of Benjamin Tucker Tanner and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner, who were prominent figures in the local African-American community. Benjamin was a minister at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, and Halle worked with him to publish the Christian Recorder, a publication of the church.[1]

In 1886, she married Charles Dillon, who died shortly after they had a child two years later. Johnson, then Halle Dillon, returned home to her family and entered the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, graduating with honors in 1891.[1]

Around the time of her graduation, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had written to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, seeking an African-American physician. Dillon accepted the offer soon after her graduation.[1]

Dillon began her career with the Alabama state medical examination, a ten-day oral examination administered by the leading physicians of the state. She was under heavy scrutiny and the public eye due to her race and gender, but successfully passed the examination to become the first woman physician in Alabama.[1][2]

While at Tuskegee, she cared for the students and staff and taught classes at the university; she founded a nursing school as well. She also practiced medicine and pharmacy in the community and founded the Lafayette Dispensary for locals.[1]

Johnson married a mathematics professor at Tuskegee, the Reverend John Quincy Johnson, in 1894, and she ended her career there when they moved to Columbia, South Carolina. Her husband became president of Allen University, a private school for black students. They then moved to Hartford, Connecticut, Atlanta, Georgia, and Princeton, New Jersey for his education in theology; they had three children together. In 1900, the Johnsons moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where John became a minister at Saint Paul's AME Church. Halle died in childbirth on April 26, 1901.[1]