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When America entered World War I in April 1917, Dr. Urbane Bass didn’t wait for his country to call him.
He wrote the secretary of war and offered his services. Two months after the nation got into the war, Bass was being trained with the 93rd Infantry Division. He was on his way to France in early 1918.
Bass was treating soldiers on the firing line when shrapnel severed his legs. The doctors told others how to treat his wounds, but he never made it to a hospital. He died on Oct. 7, 1918.
Bass was buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery, the first such ceremony for a black commissioned officer.
Bass also was the area’s first black doctor since Reconstruction. He set up his practice in Fredericksburg in 1907. The Richmond native often treated patients in their homes, doing surgery on kitchen tables if necessary.
The city’s Social Services Building is named for him and R.C. Ellison, another local black doctor who died in 1990.
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Sources: "A Different Story" by Ruth Coder Fitzgerald; HistoryPoint.org of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library; The Free Lance-Star archives; State of Michigan Web site; African Within; The Kennedy Center; We Were Always Free By T.O. Madden Jr.; The Richmond Times-Dispatch; Life Magazine; Westmoreland County, Virginia.
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by clicking on the names below. |
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• Gabriel Prosser, inspired by the Bible |
• John J. Wright devoted leader, reader |
• Urbane Bass, city doctor |
• Sadie Combs, first teacher at Snell
• Philip Wyatt,
• Palmer Hayden,
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• Venus Jones, First black graduate of MWC |
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petitioning for change |
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