Claim: Margaret Morgan Lawrence was self-educated psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked at Harlem Hospital (a 272-bed, public teaching hospital affiliated with Columbia University) for more than two decades.
Evidence: Lawrence gained a scholarship from the National Council of the Episcopal Church and attended Cornell University from 1932 to 1936. Lawrence became the third African American admitted to Columbia College P&S, starting classes in the fall of 1936 and graduating in 1940. Lawrence completed a two-year pediatric residency at Harlem Hospital (1940-1942). With a Rosenwald Foundation fellowship, Lawrence then earned a Masters in Science at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. One of her teachers there was Dr. Benjamin Spock, who introduced her to the connections between physical, social, and psychological health. In 1947 she began a National Research Council fellowship at the Babies Hospital, now an associate professor. In 1948 she became the first African American to join to the New York State Psychiatric Institute, as well as the first African American psychoanalysis trainee at Columbia University's Columbia Psychoanalytic Center, gaining certification as a pediatric psychiatrist in 1951.