Black History Month: Mozella Esther Lewis’s Thesis Established a Historical Record of the Contributions of Black People in Pharmacy at a Time When Such Research Was Scarce

The mission of the UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences is to be a driving force for the advancement of health and wellness of individuals and society. We believe that plurality of experiences, accomplishments, and values leads to greater innovation and creativity.

We, therefore, strive to maximize opportunities and inclusion for all our members and affiliates so that we can use our potential to achieve academic, scientific, and clinical excellence. Our goal is to serve all communities in the region, the state, and beyond.

This Black History Month, we are taking the opportunity to highlight the work of Mozella Esther Lewis, a pharmacist and trailblazer who, in the 1920s, compiled and published comprehensive research on Black people in pharmacy as her thesis and went on to own a successful pharmacy in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

In 1925 when Mozella Esther Lewis’s thesis was published in American Druggist, there was little documentation of Black people who had studied pharmacy and worked as pharmacists. Lewis, who was a Howard University School of Pharmacy student, took it upon herself to document how Black people in pharmacy had contributed to the profession and create a publicly available record of Black pharmacists and pharmacy students.

“History of the Negro in Pharmacy” by Mozella Esther Lewis is a historical document that chronicles the contributions of Black pharmacists and pharmacy students up to the time of its publication. The work endures as an impressive and important account of Black history and the history of pharmacy.

“Of the many histories of the Negro, there is none of the Negro pharmacist as such. Therefore the position of the Negro pharmacist has been seemingly a minor one in comparison to that of the other professions,” the thesis begins.

Lewis continues this reflection on the lack of historical records about Black people in pharmacy while clearly stating what she set out to accomplish in the work: “Negro achievements have been great, but if they remain unknown, no material good can be derived from them.”

The thesis starts by providing information on the history of pharmacy, tracing back to the beginnings of the profession in the ancient societies of Egypt, China, Greece, and more, before focusing in on the place of Black people in this history, and a void of information about such contributions.

“During all these years no mention of the Negro was made and the progress of pharmacy moved rapidly on… and after the seventeenth century all trace of [the] Negro in pharmacy was lost until recent years,” Lewis wrote.

Lewis then outlines some of this history and the strides made by Black people in pharmacy, including the operation of pharmacies and the pursuit of pharmacy education.

The bulk of research included in the thesis focuses on statistics about Black pharmacists and pharmacy students, as well as Black-owned pharmacies. Lewis lists a number of names of Black pharmacists and pharmacy students, including dates and places, as well as further information for some entries.

Some notable entries from Lewis’s thesis include:

• “William Henry Ballard, 1892, Northwestern University College of Pharmacy. Is proprietor of Ballard’s Pharmacy, Lexington, Ky., established in 1893. He was the first Negro to open a drug store in Kentucky. Retired from active service a few years ago, leaving the business in charge of his son.”
• “William O. Foster, 1904, Howard University College of Pharmacy, is president of the Foster Drug Co., established in 1907.”
• “Amanda V. Gray, 1903, Howard University College of Pharmacy, was pharmacist at the Women’s Clinic from 1903 to 1905 in Linneus, Mo. Since 1905 in partnership with her husband in the drug firm of Gray & Gray.”
• “Eldridge P. Landry, Flint Medical College, has been the pharmacist of the U. S. Food and Drug Inspection Laboratory in Savannah, Ga., since 1912.”
• “William A. Smith, 1909, Shaw University College of Pharmacy, began as pharmacist in Durham, N. C., in 1909, and was later employed in Greensboro, N. C. Passed the State Board in Massachusetts in 1912. He was with H. C. Blue, who established the Bay State Pharmacy in Boston in 1913, at the time the only drug store owned and operated by Negroes in the State of Massachusetts. He is also the only Negro member of the Massachusetts State Pharmaceutical Association.”
• “Daniel Smith is the only Negro pharmacognosist and microscopist known. Is a member of the faculty of Howard University College of Pharmacy, teaching these subjects.”

The achievement of Lewis’s thesis cannot be understated. The sheer amount of research involved in such an academic undertaking is striking, especially when factoring in the barriers that she undoubtedly faced while writing the piece — the effects of racism both limiting the materials available to her and surely hindering her personal research process as well.

“Her attempt to identify and gather data about black students at integrated schools and colleges of pharmacy was the first of its kind, and it still remains, perhaps, the only thorough investigation of this population of African-American pharmacy students across the country during the early twentieth century,” wrote Gregory Bond in “Recovering and Expanding Mozella Esther Lewis’s Pioneering History of African-American Pharmacy Students, 1870–1925.”

Published in Pharmacy in History in 2016, Bond’s article offers additional facts that are in line with Lewis’s work and provides some historical context to her research, along with biographical information about Lewis herself. The accompanying publication of “History of the Negro in Pharmacy” in Pharmacy in History was reportedly the first time Lewis’s work had been published since 1925.

In attempting to contextualize Lewis’s thesis and create a portrait of the limited resources that were available to her at the time of writing “History of the Negro in Pharmacy,” Bond includes works that aimed to accomplish similar goals as Lewis’s research.

He mentions an earlier attempt to chronicle the contributions of Black pharmacists and pharmacy students, in “The Negro in Pharmacy,” published in The Druggists Circular and Chemical Gazette in November 1897.

“Before Lewis’s thesis, in fact, there had been few attempts to record the history of the black involvement in pharmacy,” Bond explained. “Like Lewis’s thesis itself, though, this groundbreaking Druggists Circular article seemed to have been largely forgotten after its initial publication, and it was never brought to her attention.”

Bond also acknowledged the work of Leo Vinton Butts, a 1920 graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy: “Butts…, like Mozella Lewis, was one of the earliest chroniclers of African-American pharmacists, writing his thesis on ‘The Negro in Pharmacy.’ Butts had difficulty finding relevant information and lamented that ‘the library of the University of Wisconsin contains one of the best, if not the best, and largest pharmaceutical libraries in America… yet in all this library there is scarcely a reference to the negro in pharmacy.’”

Despite this sparsity of resources, Lewis was able to create a document that stands as one of the most significant historical records of the contributions of Black people in pharmacy at the time.

Lewis was awarded a Lehn & Fink Medal in Pharmacy in recognition of her work. Following the publication of her thesis and her graduation from Howard University, Lewis worked as a pharmacist at the Tuskegee Institute Hospital, in Washington, D.C., and in North Carolina before moving to Los Angeles. She founded the L & W Drug Store in 1934 with pharmacist Helen Lee Williams Hairston, who was also a Black woman.

“L & W Drug Store, which, as late as 1948, was reportedly the only pharmacy owned by African-American women in California, proved to be an immediate success, and the two co-owners soon developed reputations in L.A. as talented pharmacists,” wrote Bond.

The accomplishments of Mozella Esther Lewis, from her time at Howard University to the publication of “History of the Negro in Pharmacy” to the founding of a prosperous business, are exemplary of pioneering work in the pharmacy space and a reminder of why we celebrate Black History Month.