Kathleen Jones-King

Jones-King was born in Barbados, the daughter of Joseph Archibald Jones-King and Kathleen Jones-King. Her family moved to New York in 1906. As a teenager, she won a Boys' and Girls' Club award for her science project on ageratum, or floss flowers.[1] She graduated from Hunter College and completed a medical degree at the Howard University College of Medicine in 1931,[2][3] one year after the medical school's first known Caribbean woman graduate, Pearl Strachn of Jamaica.[4]

Jones-King pursued further studies in gynecology in Philadelphia in 1941.[5]

Jones-King completed an internship at Freedmen's Hospital,[6][7] had a private practice in Washington, D.C.,[5] spoke at public health events,[8][9] and taught bacteriology courses at Howard University.[10][11] She spent much of her career practicing medicine in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles,[2] sharing a practice with Hughenna L. Gauntlett.[12] In 1959, she and Gauntlett helped at a large polio vaccination clinic in South Los Angeles.[13] She was also a resident physician at Kern General Hospital in California.[14][15]

Jones-King served on the advisory board of the Handicapped Placement Center of Los Angeles, a job-placement program.[16] She was one of the three women doctors who ran a twice-monthly women's clinic at San Antonio Health Center, sponsored by the Huntington Park Woman's Club.[17]

Jones-King was active in Twelve Big Sisters, a philanthropic women's club in Los Angeles.[18][19] She was also a patron of the Jack and Jill Club of Los Angeles,[20] and a member of Sigma Gamma Rho.[21] She was a charter life member of the Howard University Medical Alumni Association.[22]

Jones-King married John Steele in 1936; he died two months later.[23][24] She later married A. P. Durousseau;[25] they divorced in 1953.[26] She had two sons, Wilburn Pinkard Durousseau, who also became a medical doctor,[27][28] and Joseph-Pierre. She died in 1999, aged 94 years.[2]