Anna Louise James

Anna Louise James (January 19, 1886 - 1977) was the first female African American pharmacist in Connecticut.

Willis Samuel James was enslaved on a plantation in Virginia, and escaped to Connecticut.

Her family then moved to Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where she attended the local high school and graduated in 1905.

James made extensive alterations to the pharmacy, which had been originally built in the 1790s as a general store.

[1][4] James' niece, Ann Lane Petry, was a writer,[6] whose debut novel The Street was the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies.