Keith, Rachel Boone

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Rachel Boone Keith

1924-2007

Physician, activist

"Some people referred to my mother as the tiny dynamo because physically, she was very small, just over 4 feet 11 inches tall. But she had tremendous strength," Cecile Keith Brown told Cecil Angel and Cassandra Spratling of the Detroit Free Press, referring to her mother, Detroit physician Dr. Rachel Boone Keith. A pioneering African-American physician, Keith was an institution in the Detroit community. "Can you imagine what kind of spirit was needed?" Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm said of Keith's decision to earn a medical degree in the late 1940s, when few African Americans, and fewer women still, dreamed of entering the field. "Back in the day, that just wasn't done. This is a woman of steel."

Keith was born Rachel Hannah Celestine Boone in Monrovia, Liberia, on May 30, 1924. Her parents, Clinton C. Boone and Rachel Tharps Boone, were both Baptist ministers and had gone to Africa as missionaries and health-care workers; her father had already undertaken a missionary expedition to the Congo and had lost his first wife there when she became the victim of a venomous animal bite. When Rachel was three, the family returned to the United States and settled in Richmond, Virginia, where Keith attended the segregated Paul Lawrence Dunbar Elementary School and Armstrong High School. She graduated from high school at age 13, as class valedictorian, but her graduation year was shadowed by her mother's death from tuberculosis. Watching that wasting disease take its toll, Keith decided that she was going to become a doctor.

She had a role model: her aunt Bessie Tharps, in whose Rhode Island home Keith lived after her mother's death, had gotten a medical degree at Boston University in 1916 and also studied higher mathematics. Keith attended Houghton College in New York state, graduating second in her class in 1943, and then moved on to Boston University's medical school herself. She finished her degree in 1949 and was profiled in a Boston Globe article after receiving the highest score in history on one of the school's standard tests. She worked as a caregiver in the university's home medical service and was also featured in a Look magazine article about the program.

Keith interned at Harlem Hospital in New York City and worked at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn after earning her degree. She moved to Detroit in 1951 and joined the staff of Detroit Receiving Hospital (then Detroit General Hospital) as a resident in internal medicine, becoming only the second African-American woman to hold that position. Around this time she met Damon Keith, a lawyer and future judge. The friend who introduced them wondered whether the lawyer would be intimidated by the young doctor's high-flying career, but the two got along immediately.

"Her life was a by-product of how she was raised," Damon Keith recalled to Detroit Free Press columnist Desiree Cooper. "She was very religious. She was very strong, but not pushy or demanding. She saw her life as one of service." The two were married in 1953, lived in the same house for 43 years, and raised three daughters, Cecile, Debbie, and Gilda. Damon Keith became a major player in Michigan legal and political circles, and in among the demands of her practice and of raising a family, Rachel remained supportive of his career. Detroit physician Lorna Thomas recalled to Bailey that "Rachel was very, very quiet. Damon was always in the forefront. But if you could just get her off to the side, it was a delightful conversation."

Keith was part of the staff at several Detroit hospitals before opening her own private practice in the city's Conant Gardens neighborhood. Her generosity toward patients without resources was known throughout the city, and she was legendary for being a caring physician. "She gave each of her patients so much care and love that sometimes it got her in trouble," Brown told Angel and Spratling. "People knew if they were coming to see Dr. Keith, they were going to have to wait because she gave each one time and attention." Motivated by faith, she was reluctant to proclaim it. "She didn't carry her religion on her shoulders," Damon Keith told Cooper. "She acted everyday as a woman of faith."

Both Keiths were leaders in the large Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Rachel Boone Keith in later life was active in many other organizations, serving on the boards of more than 20 medical bodies and 18 nonprofit organizations. The latter group included the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Keith as a young person had been an enthusiastic classical pianist and singer.

Keith also became interested in reconnecting with her African origins, especially after she and her husband attended the World Peace Through Law conference held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 1973. The two took the opportunity to travel to the area in Liberia where Keith was born, visiting a church her father had constructed there and meeting an old woman who remembered her as a baby. Keith actually considered returning to Liberia as a missionary herself. Her father wrote two books about his experiences in Africa, Congo as I Saw It and Liberia as I Knew It, rare documents that Keith worked to prepare for republication in modern editions. She finished only a month before her death. Keith was also a member of the African American Association of Liberia, the American Leprosy Mission, and the African Development Fund.

Old age hardly slowed Keith's activities. She retired from active practice only in 2005, and her daughter Gilda told Cooper that "[i]nto her 70s, she was still coming home at 10 p.m. and working six days a week." Despite her heavy schedule she was committed to her family life, and even as her daughters entered middle age she gathered them together for Sunday dinner and related the contents of the sermon she had heard that morning at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, basing her remarks on notes she had taken. After her death on January 4, 2007, her funeral was attended by luminaries including Governor Granholm, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and U.S. Representatives John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. "Her pet peeve was pretentiousness," Gilda Keith recalled to Bailey.

At a Glance …

Born Rachel Hannah Celestine Boone on May 30, 1924, in Monrovia, Liberia; parents were Baptist medical missionaries; returned to U.S. at age 3; raised in Richmond, VA; married Damon J. Keith, a lawyer and later judge, 1953; children: Debbie, Gilda, Cecile; died January 4, 2007, in Detroit, MI. Education: Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, Richmond, VA, valedictorian; Houghton College, BS, 1943; Boston University Medical School, MD, 1949. Religion: Missionary Baptist.

Career: Harlem Hospital, New York, NY, intern; Coney Island Hospital, Brooklyn, NY, staff physician, 1949-51; Detroit General Hospital (now Detroit Receiving Hospital), internal medicine resident, 1951-53; private practice, Detroit, MI 1954-2005.

Selected memberships: NAACP; The Links; American Leprosy Mission; Detroit Science Center; and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.