Who was Harriet Rice?

Harriet Alleyne Rice was born in 1866 in Newport, Rhode Island and would go on to be the first Black resident at the Hull-House Settlement.
Her father, George Addison Rice, was a steamer steward. As a steamer steward, George A. Rice became acquainted with many wealthy and influential people. He used these connections to assist his oldest child, Harriet’s brother George Rice II, into college and is reported to have written to the dean of his son’s college and urged him not to “go easy” on his son. Harriet’s family was ambitious and valued upwards mobility; they owned their own home and the children attended an integrated public high school. 

George Rice II was much older than Harriet and was the first in his family to become a doctor. He was initially denied admission to Columbia University’s College of Physicians in the United States, but went on to study medicine in Europe. There he would someday study under the famed surgeon John Lister, who pioneered the use of antiseptics during surgery.

George Rice ii

Harriet Rice was always a talented student and was noted as achieving the highest ranking of her graduating class in Greek. After high school, she enrolled at Wellesley College, where she was one of only three African American students. She became the first Black student to graduate from the college. During her time at Wellesley, she became acquainted with Alice Freeman, who was the president of the college and a passionate supporter of young women pursuing education. Later, Freeman became the dean of women at the University of Chicago and a strong advocate for women’s involvement in settlement houses. Freeman may have been Dr. Rice’s introduction to the Hull-House Settlement.
After graduation, Rice went on to study medicine at the University of Michigan, but her studies ground to a halt when she suffered a serious fall and subsequent medical problems. Although the exact nature of her ailment and the circumstances surrounding her fall are unknown, her injuries forced her to return to Newport to recover. The medical issues that arose from this fall would follow her for the rest of her life. 

Rice was able to resume her studies in 1890 at the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, where she earned her M.D. Following graduation, she completed an additional year of training at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. According to the book Women Building Chicago, “As late as 1904, only half of the graduates of medical schools had received any postgraduate training”. This made Rice highly qualified and, although she was determined to have an illustrious career as a doctor, her position both as a female physician and a Black physician meant that she would face discrimination throughout her career. It was only 26 years earlier that Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler had become the first Black woman to ever earn a physician’s degree in the US. Prejudiced attitudes against female doctors were still commonplace, with women often being denied appointments at hospitals and facing other forms of discrimination. Black physicians were most often restricted to working in hospitals that served only Black populations and Black women found it extremely difficult to secure courses in nursing. In rare cases where a Black physician was allowed to work with white patients, it was not uncommon for the patient themselves to refuse treatment from a Black provider. Still, Dr. Rice forged ahead, determined to win success in the medical field.

In 1893, Rice arrived at the Hull-House Settlement. Dr. Rice was an independent resident, meaning that she worked at Hull-House but did not live on-site. Sources reference her rooming with resident Florence Kelley at times, leading to the conclusion that Dr. Rice stayed at the settlement for periods, but never underwent the formal vote to live at Hull-House past a provisional stay.

During her time at Hull-House, Dr. Rice would occupy a variety of roles while trying to make strides in the medical field. Her aspiration was to open her own medical practice. Dr. Rice largely worked in Hull-House’s medical clinic and dispensary, which put her medical knowledge to use, but offered her little in the way of income or upwards mobility. The clinic opened on October 28, 1894. 

At the time of the dispensary’s opening, the population of the Near West Side, where Hull-House was located, was overwhelmingly made up of European immigrants. The Great Migration was not yet underway and Black residents made up a rather small number of Chicagoans; those Black residents that did live in Chicago were restricted to the South Side. Working with largely white clientele in a time when racist attitudes towards African-Americans prevailed, it is certain that Dr. Rice experienced racist treatment throughout the course of her work. 

Part of Dr. Rice’s role at Hull-House was to be on call for Hull-House residents and the members of the Jane Club, Hull-House’s club for single working young women. On occasion, Dr. Rice was asked to visit other members of the neighborhood, but she declined to do so.

After about a year, the doctor who had previously been running Hull-House’s clinic and dispensary was leaving her post. Dr. Rice was asked to take over operations, but she rejected this proposal and elected to cease her work in the dispensary and clinic altogether. Addams felt scorned by Dr. Rice and wrote, in a letter to Mary Rozet-Smith, that Rice “makes us indignant by her utter refusal to do anything for the sick neighbors even when they are friends of the house” and accused Rice of lacking “the settlement spirit”. In another letter to Smith that same year, Addams alleges that Rice has “no experience other than the Jane Club and H.H.” and references resident Julia Lathrop’s push for Dr. Rice to find work at Provident Hospital, a Chicago hospital that served the poor of all races, which Addams refers to as “the colored hospital”. During this period, Mary Rozet-Smith provided a stipend for Harriet Rice to work in the Hull-House branch of the Chicago Public Library, which she did for a time. 

Dr. Harriet A. Rice, 1916

The differences in the life experience of each woman based on their race and class are revealed in this letter. For Addams, a white woman who came from greater means, working among the poor was a noble cause and did not limit her prospects. For Harriet Rice, a Black woman from a working-class family who had fought vigorously for all that she had achieved, working among the poor could have represented a failure to improve her circumstances and gain the distinction that she desired. Dr. Rice had to be exceptional in order to prove her competence in her field, but she received limited financial compensation and had limited opportunities. Addams’ economic mobility and social status provided security, whereas Dr. Rice’s status was more tenuous, nuanced, and placed her in a difficult position.

In 1895, Jane Addams fell ill with abdominal pain and a high fever. There are disputed accounts of this event, but one account goes as follows: after Addams fell ill, Harriet Rice attended her and diagnosed her with typhoid fever, but alternate diagnoses circulated. A different physician who was a friend of Addams’ diagnosed her with appendicitis. He removed her appendix, but her condition did not improve, and it was determined that Rice’s diagnosis of typhoid fever had been correct. Addams does reference suffering from typhoid fever in the year 1895 in her book 20 Years at Hull-House, but makes no reference to Dr. Rice.

1895 was a year in which Dr. Rice occupied many varied positions in the field of medicine. At this time in Chicago, there was an issue of overreliance on midwives during the birthing process. This presented problems because midwives were not equipped to deliver babies in cases involving complications. The department released a list of their obstetric staff in order to make obstetric services more available and stated that, for parents who could not afford the doctor’s fees, services would be provided at no cost to the parents. Dr. Harriet Rice is listed as a member of this obstetric staff. 

In this same year, Addams and Rice reached a compromise regarding the Hull-House medical dispensary and clinic. Rice was to run the clinic part-time and simultaneously operate her premiere private practice, where she shared an office with three other female physicians. From June 1895 to June 1896, Rice ran the Hull-House dispensary and clinic as well as her own private practice, but both were forced to close in the summer of 1896. In a Hull-House bulletin from January 1896, a time in which Rice was reported to be running the dispensary, Rice is listed as “Secretary”. 

In 1897, Dr. Rice was hired as the only doctor at the newly established Chicago Maternity Hospital and Training School for Nursery Maids. Two years later, in 1899, Dr. Rice was once again forced to return to Newport for surgery due to serious illness. When she returned to Chicago, she participated in relief work with the Hull-House branch of the Chicago Bureau of Charities (1901) and served as the Hull-House cashier in 1904. That year, she left Hull-House and did not return. A surviving letter of Dr. Rice’s in later years alludes to a dispute that caused her departure, possibly from prior tensions between herself and Addams. In the following years, Rice was active in the Providence, Rhode Island chapter of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (1906), a reform organization for college-educated women, and to have worked in a pathology laboratory in Boston (1910). 

After World War I broke out, Dr. Rice resolved to dedicate herself to the war effort. After being rejected by the American Red Cross due to her race, her service was accepted in France. Before her arrival, she was able to reconnect with her brother George, who had remained working in Europe after completing his studies there. Harriet Rice began treating wounded soldiers in 1915 and served for the bulk of the war, traveling home to Newport only in 1918 after the Armistice that ended hostilities was signed. For this service, she was awarded the Reconnaissance Française, a French medal of gratitude. This period in Dr. Rice’s life afforded her the opportunity that she had long sought - to practice medicine and receive recognition for her critical work.

the Reconnaissance Française

After completing her service in the war, Dr. Rice returned to Newport, where she lived with her sister for a period. In 1925, her sister passed away, which devastated Dr. Rice. She would go on to describe herself as “a lonely wanderer on the face of the earth, without friends, without home, without employment of any kind”. 

By 1933, Dr. Rice had gone to New York City and worked in a Columbia University Medical Center laboratory. She received news that she may be laid off, and her attention once again turned to Hull-House. She wrote to Mary Rozet-Smith and asked if Hull-House could have a place for her. In this letter, Rice’s tone is dark and desperate. She discusses “jumping out of window, or turning on the gas, or the like”, but concludes that she must “keep on fighting a while longer”, which suggests a possible struggle with suicidal ideation. It is unclear whether Smith answered these communications, but Dr. Rice remained employed at the Columbia University Medical Center laboratory until 1935. That year, her Wellesley graduating class was issued a survey about their life post-graduation. Rice filled out few questions on the questionnaire, one of which was: “Have you any handicap, physical or other, which has been a determining factor in your activity?” Rice’s reply is an indictment of the racism she experienced during her career. “Yes! I’m colored, which is worse than any crime in this God Blessed Christian country! My country tis of thee.”

Rice lived to be 92 years of age and is buried in God’s Little Acre cemetery in Newport along with her parents.