Justina Ford

Justina Laurena Warren was born in 1871 in Knoxville, Illinois several years after the Civil War. She was one of many children and often accompanied her mother, a nurse, when she tended to patients. In 1892 she married Baptist minister John Ford and subsequently moved to Chicago, where she graduated from the Hering Medical College in 1899. Since African Americans were barred at the time from working in hospitals or joining the Colorado Medical Association, Ford set up a private practice in her home in Five Points, where she specialized in gynecology, obstetrics, and pediatrics. Ford continued to practice medicine until two weeks before her death in 1952. ==Posthumous honors==

In 1988, Ford's home in Five Points, Denver, was converted into the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center. One room is devoted to an exhibition of her life and work. Ford was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985 and was named a "Medical Pioneer of Colorado" by the Colorado Medical Society in 1989. In 1998, a sculpture of Ford holding a baby, made by Jess E. DuBois, was erected outside her house. An elementary school in Littleton, Colorado, has been named in her honor; construction began in 2020. ==See also==