Rare Educational Opportunities
Nursing Students Tuskegee Institute in 1917, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
What do we know about Naturopath Dr. Alvenia Fulton’s (1893 to 1999) education? She grew up on a farm in Pulaski, Tennessee. Both parents and all her siblings were literate. Fulton graduated from Pulaski’s colored High School and went on to graduate from Tennessee State Normal College where she trained to be a teacher. Thereafter she studied theology at Greater Payne Theological Seminary in Birmingham, Alabama and became an ordained AME preacher. Her educational accomplishments in the south before returning to school to become a naturopath was extraordinary for any of her peers no matter their caste and gender.