Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson (October 17, 1864 – April 26, 1901) was an American physician. She was the first black woman, as well as woman of any race, to be licensed as a physician in Alabama. Biography Early years Johnson was born Halle Tanner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the oldest daughter of Benjamin Tucker Tanner and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner, who were prominent figures in the local African-American community. She was the oldest of nine siblings, four sisters, two brothers, and two siblings who died in infancy. Benjamin was a minister at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh that also wrote several books, and Halle worked with him to publish the Christian Recorder, a publication of the church. Her brother was the painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. Her niece was Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first black woman in the United States to received a Ph.D and the first president of Delta Sigma Theta. In June 1886, she married Charles Dillon who died from pneumonia about two years after their marriage and they had a child together named Sadie in 1887. Johnson, then Halle Dillon, returned home to her family and entered the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania at the age of 24, graduating with honors in 1891. Around the time of her graduation, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had written to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, seeking an African-American physician. Dillon accepted the offer soon after her graduation. Later life Johnson married a mathematics professor at Tuskegee, the Reverend John Quincy Johnson, in 1894, and she ended her career there when they moved to Columbia, South Carolina. Her husband became president of Allen University, a private school for black students. They then moved to Hartford, Connecticut, Atlanta, Georgia, and Princeton, New Jersey for his education in theology; they had three sons together, John Quincy Jr., Benjamin T., and Henry Tanner. In 1900, the Johnsons moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where John became a minister at Saint Paul's AME Church. Death and burial Johnson died from dysentery during childbirth on April 26, 1901. She is buried at Nashville's Greenwood Cemetery. Career When Dillon got to Alabama she was tutored by Dr. Cornelius N. Dorsette to prepare for the medical exam. Dillon began her career with the Alabama state medical examination, a ten-day oral examination administered by the leading physicians of the state. She began this process by