William Harry Barnes,MD – “Strong Willed and Unbreakable”

Dr William Harry Barnes, for whom the Harry Barnes Medical Society is named, ¹ was the first African American to be certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties (in his case the newly defined American Board of Otolaryngology [founded 1924]), but he was so much more than that. He was a man of “indomitable spirit and enormous physical energy” who overcame the obstacles of modest birth and Jim Crow America to do what more sensible minds thought impossible (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Undated portrait of Dr William Harry Barnes (The University Archives, The University of Pennsylvania (https://we.tl/t-H8qlgYgF54), accessed February 19, 2026.

Harry Barnes was born in 1887, the only son of George Washington Barnes and Eliza Webb Barnes – who were both born into slavery. They had crossed the Mason–Dixon line and settled in the city of Philadelphia, one of the most racially segregated cities in America and a place of much racial tension. ² Harry grew up at seventh and Lombard Streets, home to the city’s highest concentration of poor Black residents, according to the sociologist WEB DuBois.

Young Harry decided he would become a doctor, despite discouragement and gloomy predictions from friends and family. ³ He walked 4 miles from his home to Central High School in North Philadelphia and back each day for the best education. During the school term he was a messenger and porter in jewelers’ stores and in the summer worked in hotels. ⁴ In 1908, he graduated from high school with the degree of Bachelor of Arts (possible at that time) and spent the summer studying for the competitive scholarship examination to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He became the first the man of color to win it. ⁵

Barnes graduated in 1912 and began his general medical internship at Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital – Philadelphia’s first hospital for African Americans and the second in the United States. ⁶ After 7 years of clinical experience at the Douglass Hospital, in 1921 he took a lecture course in Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. The instructors included Chevalier Jackson and George Coates. Barnes found postgraduate surgical training unobtainable in the United States, so he journeyed to France in 1924 for advanced study under Drs Sebileau and Baldenbeck (University of Paris) and Dr Moure of Bordeaux. Back in Philadelphia, he came under the mentorship of Chevalier Jackson. Pioneering again, Barnes became the first American Black man to master the technique of bronchoscopy.

With his advanced skills, Harry Barnes became quite successful not only treating the Philadelphia community but also travelling around the East Coast to teach and occasionally operate. At the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1926 he conducted demonstrations at the Anatomical, Pathological and Surgical Exhibit on the ENT. He was appointed lecturer and consultant in bronchoscopy at Howard University Medical School where he gave courses in ENT and in bronchoscopy to several younger otolaryngologists. And yes, he travelled to New York to perform a tonsillectomy for WEB DuBois (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Bill for tonsillectomy performed by Harry Barnes to WEB DuBois, New York – paid. ³

Barnes was an inventor. He designed and built a hypophyscope for transsphenoidal surgery of the pituitary ⁷ (Figure 3). He also developed lingual tonsillectome modeled after the LaForce adenotome, described a special method for opening peritonsillar abscesses and devised an incision for myringotomy using a curved incision for the radial fibers and the radial incision for the circular fibers.

Figure 3.

“An improved hypophyscope” Barnes’ artist rendition of the hyphoscope. ⁷

Dr Barnes served as president of the National Medical Association, a leading society of African American physicians, and published 17 of his 24 articles in its journal. He was a member of the American Laryngological Association, the Philadelphia County Medical Society and the American Medical Association.

To the Philadelphian community, Barnes was known as not only a skilled physician but also a philanthropist committed to caring for underserved populations. He became president of the Zoar Methodist Church, helping it survive the Great Depression. In politics, Dr Barnes ran as Independent Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1932 and was appointed as one of the original members of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

In 1938, he suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage which markedly curtailed his activities. In 1943 he sustained a spinal injury with paraplegia. After 2 years in a wheelchair, he died of broncho-pneumonia January 15, 1945, at the age of 58.