Cornelius N. Dorsette

He went to elementary school in Thomasville, and then went to the Hampton Institute in Virginia, where Booker T. Washington was one of his classmates; he graduated in 1878.

He studied Latin, and for a while attended Syracuse University Medical School but health problems forced him to drop out.

With financial help from Vosburgh, Dorsette tried to get into New York University's medical school, only to be denied because he was Black.

[1] Washington told him that Montgomery was in dire need of medical doctors;[1] in a letter dated February 28, 1883, Washington told him that the city had some 30,000 citizens, "more than half colored", and that there was no Black doctor in town; he also mentioned that "the white Congregational minister is very anxious to have you locate here".

One of the nurses in training there was Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson; a graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Washington had brought her to Tuskegee to be the staff doctor.

[1] Dorsette was also Washington's personal doctor and looked after the medical needs of the faculty and students at Tuskegee University.

Acquainted with vaccination, he was able to prevent a widespread outbreak of smallpox[1] and received positive appraisals from local white doctors in the press.

In Montgomery, he had a three-story building put up on Dexter Avenue for his office and a pharmacy with the help of his father-in-law.