Dr. Eliza Ann Grier

Eliza Anna Grier (1864–1902) was an American physician and the first African-American woman licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Grier was an emancipated slave who believed she could be most helpful to other African Americans by getting a medical education.

To pay for her medical education, she alternated every year of her studies with a year of picking cotton. It took her seven years to graduate. In 1898 she became the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state of Georgia, and although she faced racial discrimination and was plagued with financial difficulties throughout her education and her career, she fought tenaciously for her right to earn a living as a woman doctor.