Berry Leonidas was born in Woodsdale, North Carolina. In 1924, He graduated from Wilberforce University. He also received another Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago. He received a medical degree from Rush medical university.
In 1933 he received a Masters degree in Pathology from the University of Illinois. He worked at several hospitals including Cooks county hospital in Chicago and Freedman’s Hospital in New York where he became the first African American to specialize in Gastroenterology. It was at Cooks county hospital was he became the first African American attending staff physician. Continuing on this path of firsts, Leonidas is the first to invent a direct vision instrument which was called the Gastroscopy scope. This scope was used to remove any diseased stomach tissue from a patient.
In 1946 he joined on to staff at Michael Reese hospital. He later becomes the first Medical director of the AME Health commission for which he served thirty years.
It was in these years that Leonidas took up the fight for equal health services for minorities. He started the “Berry Plan” which provided not only counseling but prevention and follow-up care for Black narcotic users. This new and cost effect plan was then implemented by the State of Illinois Public Health. In 1954he began presenting his findings and studies to the World congresses.
He organized the Flying Black Medics this team of doctors provided dental, medical, dietary and social services to poor underprivileged blacks in Cairo, Illinois.
He traveled extensively to countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal, where he gave lectures and presentations to hospitals and medical schools. He presented his theories and knowledge on stomach diseases in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines and Hawaii. At the end of his medical career, in 1975, he was the senior attending physician and chief of endoscopy.
He was not only a trail blazer, civil rights activist and distinguished doctor, he was also an author. His book, I Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ For My Journey: Two Centuries of an Afro-American Minister’s Family, which was primarily a genealogical history of his family. He was a hard working man who always strived for more and never settled for less. He earned more degrees than most that did not have to deal with so much adversity. Leonidas passed away in Chicago on December 4, 1995.
