YouTube. In 1893, exactly 119 years ago Monday, Chicago surgeon Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery, in what would become both a significant medical advancement, and a huge step in the fight for equality, since Williams was one of the nation's few black cardiologists at the time.r. Hale Williams, back in 1893, had performed the first cardiac operation in the United States, and possibly the world as far as records show, Dr. Jonathan O. Nwiloh, a cardiothoracic surgeon, told TMW Media.