Coleman, Frederick Douglass, Jr.
(born: January 25, 1921 - died: January 21, 1967)Frederick Douglass Coleman, Jr. was one of the earliest African American surgeons in the U.S. Army. He was born in Louisville, KY, and grew up in Pulaski, TN. He was the son of Frederick Douglass Coleman, Sr. and Jamye H. Coleman, the wife of Anne Teresa Gleaves Coleman, and the brother of Jamye Coleman Williams. The family lived in Tennessee where Frederick D. Coleman, Sr. was an A.M.E. Pastor.
His son Coleman, Jr. was a physician and minister. He was a graduate of Fisk University, earned his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in 1944, and his D. D. from Monrovia College (Liberia) in 1955. He practiced medicine in Clarksville, TN, for 21 years.
Coleman, Jr. had served as captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1953-1955 and was Commanding Officer of the 765th Medical Detachment. The Chief Physical Examiner with the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Campbell, KY, he was a Battalion Surgeon of the 47th Armored Medical Bn 1st Armored Division. Frederick C. Coleman, Jr. served in the Army for two years, enlisting just before the end of the Korean War, and he was honorably discharged on May 23, 1955.
He was a member of the integrated Montgomery County Medical Society in Clarksville, TN. In addition to serving as pastor of a number of churches (he was licensed to preach in 1939), he was a representative on the A.M.E. Church Medical Missions Board National Council of Churches. Coleman served for 27 years as a pastor and presiding elder in an A.M.E. Church.
Dr. Frederick Douglass Coleman, Jr. died in Clarksville, TN, in 1967. He was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Nashville, TN.
For more see "Frederick Douglass Coleman, Jr." in Biographical Directory of Negro Ministers, by E. L. Williams; Frederick D. Coleman, Jr. in U.S. Headstone Applications for Military Veterans (Ancestry); "Dr. Coleman, Jr.," Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, 01/23/1967, p.8. For more about the Coleman family and the AME Church see The Encyclopaedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, compiled by Bishop R. R. Wright.