Even if you don’t see it, you can be it.
Growing up in South Minneapolis in the 1940s and 50s, Susan Ellis Crutchfield probably didn’t see a lot of Black female doctors. That didn’t stop her from becoming one.
Attending the University of Minnesota (U of M) Medical School in the 1960s, she didn’t see other students who looked like her. That didn’t stop her from being the first Black woman to graduate from the U of M med school.
Later in life, Dr. Crutchfield may not have seen other Black women chairing hospital boards. That didn’t stop her from chairing the board of the Children’s Minnesota Minneapolis hospital in the early 90s.
Dr. Crutchfield is no longer here for us to ask her how it felt to break barriers throughout her life. She passed away in 2024 at the age of 83. But her husband Robert Mitsch says she was ahead of her time in more ways than one.
Mitsch says Dr. Crutchfield learned to read when she was 3 years old. She started second grade when she was 4. She graduated from Minneapolis Central High School in 1956 when she was 15. And in addition to being the first Black woman to graduate from the U of M medical school, she was also the youngest person. She got her MD degree when she was just 22 years old.
Dr. Crutchfield’s time chairing the Children’s Minnesota board was just one of many ways she gave back. She also served on the board at Tubman. She volunteered as a family doctor and board member at Southside Clinic in Minneapolis. She served on the Minority Admissions Committee at the University of Minnesota Medical School to ensure more people who looked like her would become doctors.
Mitsch says Dr. Crutchfield always loved pediatrics and enjoyed seeing women and children in the clinic. She wanted to provide the same care she received as a child. He said mothers had an affection for her, trusted her with their children, because she herself was a mother.
La’Anna “Lay” Johnson, RN and clinical equity education specialist at Children’s Minnesota, sees power and resilience in Dr. Crutchfield’s work, especially being “a one and only” as a doctor, a space that’s considered prestigious.
“When you are a ‘first,’ an ‘only’ or one of the ‘few,’ it can be a very challenging experience. Not only do you spend so much time and energy having to ‘earn’ your right to be there among other things, but you are setting the precedent for future representation of that group you represent,” Johnson says. “When you yourself don’t have that representation or that example of someone to look up to, you are forced to look in that mirror and see that in yourself, which, for many, would create a lot of self-doubt. Thank you, Dr. Crutchfield.”
Children’s Minnesota is a big organization with a long history. It’s easy to forget the many people who have devoted themselves to helping kids in our community live healthier lives. It’s easy to forget that some of them had to blaze trails in order to do the work.
Dr. Crutchfield didn’t have the path laid out before her. But she forged ahead anyway. That’s something I hope we never forget. Even though we might not always see what’s possible, that shouldn’t stop us from working to create it anyway.
