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Great Lives from History: American Women

Joycelyn Elders

by Janet Ober Berman, Micah L. Issitt

Physician and politician

In 1993, Elders became the first African American and second female U.S. Surgeon General. The first person in the state of Arkansas to become board certified as a pediatric endocrinologist, Elders is noted for raising awareness of and promoting education on significant public health issues, such as teenage pregnancy and school-based sexual education.

Born: August 13, 1933

Area of Achievement: Education, government and politics, medicine

Early Life

Minnie Joycelyn Elders (JOYS-lihn EHL-durz) was born Minnie Lee Jones in her parents' cabin, the first of eight children. It was not until after college that she adopted the name Joycelyn, for the name of her favorite candy. Elders's parents, Curtis and Haller Jones, were cottonpickers. Curtis hunted for food for the family and to sell the skins. Elders displayed a strong work ethic early on; at the age of five, she labored in the cotton fields and attended a segregated school far from home. Despite her parents' lack of higher education, her mother instilled the importance of this and taught Elders to read at a young age. She graduated from her high school as valedictorian at the age of fifteen. Her grandmother is credited as persuading Elders's father to allow his oldest child to pursue further education.

Joycelyn Elders. (NIH)

GLHW_EldersJocelyn.jpg

Although her family was poor, they worked in the cotton field to help support her, the first member of the family to attend college. In 1949, Elders earned a scholarship to Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, an African American university. Once in college, Elders gained exposure to the scientific and medical fields. She had never seen a doctor until this time. Originally, Elders intended to be a laboratory technician, but after attending a speech by pediatrician Edith Irby Jones, the first African American female to graduate from the University of Arkansas Medical School, Elders had a change of heart. She graduated in three years from Philander Smith College with the intention of becoming a pediatrician to help improve the lives of children.

After joining the U.S. Army, Elders trained as a physical therapist at Fort Sam Brooke Army Medical Center in Houston, Texas. In 1953, she served as a physical therapist in the Army Women's Medical Specialist Corps; in 1960, she began attending medical school on the G.I. Bill, the only female in her class.

Life's Work

After graduation from medical school, Elders fulfilled her internship year at the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She subsequently completed a residency in pediatrics at the Arkansas Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and remained another year for a research fellowship. She earned a master's degree in biochemistry in 1967. Elders accepted a position as an assistant professor, then full professor, at the University of Arkansas Medical School. She was the first African American professor at the university. In 1978, she was the first person to become board certified in the state of Arkansas as a pediatric endocrinologist. She is considered an expert in the fields of juvenile diabetes and growth abnormalities, with hundreds of published scientific papers. As part of her concentration on juvenile diabetes, Elders became interested in the prevention of teenage pregnancies, which, together, could lead to increased risk for pregnancy loss and birth defects.

Elders's career turned toward the public health realm when then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton appointed her the state's director of public health in 1987. Elders focused her efforts on increasing childhood immunization rates and promoting access to testing for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She also fostered such women's health initiatives as prenatal care and prevention of teenage pregnancy, because Arkansas had a higher-than-average percentage of teenage births. Elders's agendas were viewed by some as controversial because her program for school-based clinics included the distribution of contraceptives, especially condoms, and other birth control methods. Under Elders, the state of Arkansas passed legislature in 1989 to teach sexual education, substance-abuse prevention, and other public health issues from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

After Bill Clinton was elected president, Elders was confirmed as the sixteenth U.S. Surgeon General on September 17, 1993. She was the first African American and the second woman to hold the position. She continued to push her agenda of cigarette, drug, and alcohol abuse prevention, legalization of drugs for medicinal purposes, prevention of teenage pregnancy, promotion of the RU-486 abortion pill, and awareness of chronic health issues among adolescents. Elders supported universal health care. Her liberal views were not endorsed by many who shared the philosophies of Republicans and other conservatives. However, Elders stated that, despite her unpopularity with certain parties, the importance of the issues never caused her to waver in voicing her opinions. She was forced to resign only fifteen months in office after she made a controversial statement about using masturbation to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. She returned to the University of Arkansas to teach and to practice pediatric endocrinology at Arkansas Children's Hospital. She retired from clinical practice, but has continued to lecture on public health issues.

Though her controversial term as Surgeon General ended with her resignation, Elders has sinced been asked to address her positions on sex and drug legalization in interviews. She was one of the experts interviewed for the 2013 documentary How to Lose Your Virginity. Elders defended her position that abstinence education is not effective, and her belief that teenagers should be introduced to masturbation and contraceptives as part of a healthy sex education. In a 2010 speech on the legalization of drugs, Elders reaffirmed her belief that marijuana should be legalized in the United States.

After graduating from college in 1952, Elders was briefly married to Cornelius Reynolds. In 1960, when she was still in medical school, she married Oliver Elders in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they had two sons.

Significance

Joycelyn Elders's 1996 autobiography is titled Joycelyn Elders, M.D.: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America, a tribute to the adversity Elders overcame to succeed. In the face of poverty, segregation, sexism, and political turmoil, Elders remained true to her beliefs and passionately fought for issues in which she strongly believed she could make a difference. Elders lobbied for equal access to health care and for solutions to teenage pregnancy problems, including prevention and abortion, before these problems came to the forefront of American society. Despite her short term as Surgeon General, Elders was the first African American and the second woman to hold the office.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Ober Berman, Janet, and Micah L. Issitt. "Joycelyn Elders." Great Lives from History: American Women, edited by Mary K. Trigg, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLHW_0153.

APA 7th

Ober Berman, J., & Issitt, M. L. (2016). Joycelyn Elders. In M. K. Trigg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: American Women. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Ober Berman, Janet and Issitt, Micah L. "Joycelyn Elders." Edited by Mary K. Trigg. Great Lives from History: American Women. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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