African-American surgeon Matilda Arabelle Evans was born June 23, 1870, in Aiken County, South Carolina, the oldest of three children born to Harriet and Andy Evans. As a student at the Scholfield Normal and Industrial School, she became a protégé of the school's founder, Martha Scholfield, an outstanding educator. Evans attended Oberlin College in Ohio before enrolling at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania to earn a medical degree. She then returned to South Carolina to practice surgery, gynecology, and obstetrics. Evans opened her medical practice in Columbia, which, at that time, offered no hospital facilities for African-American people.With a generosity that was typical of her, Evans took patients into her own home until she could establish a hospital for them. In 1901, she established the Taylor Lane Hospital, both a hospital and a training school for nurses. The hospital was later destroyed by fire, which led to another hospital and finally a larger facility, the St. Luke's Hospital and Training School for Nurses. In 1918, she became a registered volunteer in the Medical Service Corps of the United States Army. She also founded the Good Health Association of South Carolina to help convince people that they could improve their own health by following sound health practices and safe sanitary habits.
Charity, compassion, and a love of children were the hallmarks of Dr. Evans' career. She charged only nominal fees, and she rode bicycles, horses, and buggies to visit the sick who were unable to go to her surgery. She provided for school physical examinations and immunizations, which saved the lives of countless young children, and in 1930 she operated a free clinic for black children who needed medical treatment and vaccinations. Incredibly, Evans found the time to raise 11 children who needed a home.
In addition to becoming a "mother" to some of the children who were left at her practice, she brought up five children from relatives who had died. She taught the children respect, cleanliness, and manners, and provided them all with the opportunity for a college education. People, both young and old, enjoyed the facilities that she shared at a recreational center that she developed on her twenty-acre farm. Evans was an active member of St. Luke's Episcopal Church and she loved to swim, dance, knit, and play the piano. Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia has named an award in her honor.
The first African-American woman to be licensed as a physician in South Carolina, Matilda Evans died in 1935.