Blacks@Dartmouth 1775 to 1960

Dr. Elijah Henry Allen, Jr., of Washington, D.C., died on September 20, 1960 at the National Institutes of Health. He was in his 57th year. A native of Washington and the son of a physician, Dr. Allen graduated from Dunbar High School there in 1919. He then attended Dartmouth College from which he received the A.B. in 1923. He was awarded the M.D. by Howard University in 1927 and served his internship in Freedmen's Hospital. The following year he practiced in Summit, New Jersey and McAlester, Oklahoma.

In 1948 he was appointed director of the Central Louisville Health Center, Louisville, Kentucky, a post which he held until May 1960, when he left the United States to accept an appointment in Monrovia, Liberia, as director of clinics of the Carrie B. Dyer Maternity Center and Hospital. After serving only two months in this position he was afflicted with malaria and developed complications which necessitated his return to the United States. Despite the ultimate in medical attention at Freedmen's Hospital and the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, he did not survive.

Dr. Allen's service in Liberia was the culmination of a life-long ambition to contribute to a locality where his services might be very badly needed. It is tragic that his fate made his term so short. Dr. Allen was married to Miss Lula Claire Hawthorne of Summit, New Jersey, in 1928. She was his companion in Liberia and survives him. Surviving also are three sisters and two brothers.