Daniel Williams, a meticulous, knowledgeable surgeon and founder of the first interracial hospital in the United States, advanced further in medicine than any other African-American doctor of his time. Among his many achievements, Williams is credited with having performed the first emergency open-heart surgery.

Williams was born the fifth of seven children of Daniel and Sarah Ann Price Williams on January 18, 1858 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. At the age of eleven, he was left an orphan after his father, a prosperous barber, died of tuberculosis and his mother deserted him. First apprenticed to a cobbler, he rebelled against repetitive, menial labor and moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin, to live with his sister Sally. He boarded with a foster family and found work as a barber and guitarist in a string band so that he could attend Haire's Classical Academy in Janesville, from which he graduated in 1877.

Following the example of his...