Alexander Thomas Augusta (March 8, 1825 – December 21, 1890) was a surgeon, veteran of the American Civil War, and the first African-American professor of medicine in the United States.

[2] In 1868 Augusta was the first African American to be appointed to the faculty of Howard University and the first to any medical college in the United States.

As a young man, he began to learn to read while working as a barber, although it was illegal for free blacks to do so in Virginia at that time.

He was also the president of Provincial Association for the Education and Elevation of the Coloured People of Canada, a literary society that donated books and other school supplies to black children.

I was compelled to leave my native country, and come to this on account of prejudice against colour, for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of my profession, and having accomplished that object, at one of the principle educational institutions of this Province, I am now prepared to practice it, and would like to be in a position where I can be of use to my race.

If you will take the matter into favorable consideration, I am given satisfactory references as to character and qualification from some of the most distinguished members of the profession in this city where I have been in practice for about six years.

A.T. Augusta, Bachelor of Medicine, Trinity College, Toronto He was initially rejected due to his racial background and, since he was a British subject, his enlistment would violate the Great Britain's Proclamation of Neutrality.

On February 1, 1864, Augusta wrote to Judge Advocate Captain C. W. Clippington about discrimination against African-American passengers on the streetcars of Washington, D.C.. Dr. Augusta's letter was printed in New York and Washington newspapers and read aloud in Congress on February 10, 1864, by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner:[10] Sir: I have the honor to report that I have been obstructed in getting to the court this morning by the conductor of car No.

I started from my lodgings to go to the hospital I formerly had charge of to get some notes of the case I was to give evidence in, and hailed the car at the corner of Fourteenth and I streets.

Colored Troops.Sumner introduced a resolution in Congress, supported by his reading of the letter to the assemblage:[11] Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia be directed to consider the expediency of further providing by law against the exclusion of colored persons from the equal enjoyment of all railroad privileges in the District of Columbia.Edward Bates, the Attorney General in President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, belittled the incident and senators who supported Sumner.

[12] He was a slaveholder but earlier in his career in St. Louis, Missouri, had acted as defense counsel for enslaved persons in freedom suits.

In 1865 Augusta wrote a letter to Major General Lewis Wallace, protesting the unequal treatment of African-American train passengers, who were forced to sit in segregated sections.

[13] That letter preceded the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which challenged racial segregation on public transportation in the U.S. On February 26, 1868, Augusta testified before the United States Congressional Committee on the District of Columbia with regard to Mrs. Kate Brown.

[14] Mustering out of the service in October 1866, Augusta accepted an assignment with the Freedmen's Bureau, heading the agency's Lincoln Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.

While there, he encouraged African-American self-help, urged the freedmen to support independent institutions, and gained respect from the city's white physicians.

[17] Augusta feared such exclusion from a professional society would impede the progress of younger African-American physicians in the city, and worked against such racial discrimination.