Allen W. Freeman Collection

Biography

Allen Weir Freeman was a white physician and public health administrator. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1881, the son of Bettie Allen Freeman and Walker Burford Freeman, an insurance agent who served for four years during the Civil War in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was the honorary commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans. Freeman’s brother, Douglas Southall Freeman, edited the Richmond News Leader and authored the definitive multivolume biography of the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. Freeman received his B.S. from the University of Richmond in 1899 and his M.D. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1905. After an internship in Newark, New Jersey, he was a demonstrator in physiology at the Medical College of Virginia from 1906-1907 and a medical inspector in the Richmond City Health Department from 1907-1908 investigating the causes of typhoid. While serving as assistant commissioner of health for the state of Virginia from 1908-1915, he also was state director of the Rockefeller Hookworm Commission for Virginia from 1910-1914. He was an epidemiologist with the U. S. Public Health Service from 1915-1917. He served as Commissioner of Health for Ohio from 1917-1921, where he reorganized the state’s local health service through legislation to establish rural health districts with full-time health officers.  

In 1921, William Welch recruited Freeman back to Johns Hopkins University as a lecturer in Public Health Administration in the School of Hygiene and Public Health. He was promoted to professor in 1923 and became chair of Public Health Administration. He served as Dean of the school from 1934 to 1937, a critical time for the school during the Great Depression during which the school shifted focus away from laboratory sciences and toward applied research. Under his leadership, the school initiated a study of mental hygiene within the Eastern Health District, inaugurated the nation’s first graduate training program in venereal disease and syphilis control, and dramatically expand its MPH program with aid from the Social Security Act of 1935, which Freeman assisted in writing the public health section. He served as President of the American Public Health Association in 1942. In 1946, he retired from teaching and published “Five Million Patients,” a memoir of his work and teaching experiences in the field of public health. Freeman helped write and enact legislation for a sweeping reorganization of the Maryland State Health Department in 1951. He was instrumental in establishing the Maryland Medical Care Program, one of the nation’s first state health plans for low-income residents and later a template for Medicaid. He died in Baltimore in 1954.

Scope and Content

The Allen Freeman collection contains letters exchanged between Freeman and his family between 1904-1908. Included are correspondence with his father, Walker Burford Freeman, his mother Bettie Allen Freeman, and his brother, Douglas Southall Freeman. Topics discussed include family matters, classroom work, finances, and travel arrangements. Correspondence from Walker Freeman to his son Allen Freeman documents the family’s use of racist language and dialect.

Catalog Record

Additional Links

Records of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Dean’s Office, Allen Freeman Correspondence, 1934-1937

Douglas Southall Freeman papers

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