Thelma Coffey was born on 9 February 1911 in Uptown New Orleans. She was one of two daughters born to John Joseph Coffey and Ann Hattie Fournet. Her father worked for a shoe manufacturer and was an active member of several Catholic lay organizations. She graduated from Xavier Preparatory School in 1927. Just what her inspiration to enter medicine was is not certain.
The first woman of color to obtain a medical degree in Louisiana was Dr. Emma Wakefield Paillet, a native of New Iberia, who moved to San Francisco after she married and never practiced. The second black female physician was Dr. Ella N. Prescott who practiced briefly in New Orleans and then in Franklinton, where she died in 1925. Perhaps a young Thelma had an opportunity to meet Dr. Prescott, who died just two years before she completed high school. It may very well be that Thelma Coffey was determined forward-thinking young woman who was determined to enter a profession which she saw dominated by men in New Orleans.
She lived with cousins in Chicago while she studied pre-med at Crane College. She graduated from Crane in 1930. Afterwards, she traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where she was accepted to Meharry Medical College. Founded during Reconstruction in 1876, Meharry ranked alongside the Howard University College of Medicine as the top producers of black physicians in the early twentieth-century. While the first woman to graduate from Meharry had done so in 1893, the number of female students was very small. During Thelma’s four years of study, there were never more than five or six female students in the School of Medicine at any given time. This must have proved an interesting experience for Thelma. During her time at Meharry, she boarded at the home of Mrs. Clara Booth, a widow, and her family. She graduated in 1934.
Dr. Coffey returned to New Orleans to complete her internship at the newly-opened Flint-Goodridge Hospital. At that time, many expecting mothers utilized the services of midwives due to their inexpensive cost, despite the fact that many midwives did not have knowledge of the best practices in maternity care. The young Superintendent Albert W. Dent convinced the governing board to allow him to offer a flat maternity rate of ten dollars which covered care, the costs of medicine, and any necessary procedures. This brought a steady stream of obstetrics cases to the hospital and many mothers received the patient and attentive care of the pretty young ‘lady intern.’ She subsequently completed her residency at the famed Provident Hospital in Chicago.
Appeasing her mother, Dr. Coffey, who was one of two daughters, came back to New Orleans in 1937, when she began her private practice and served on the staff of Flint-Goodridge. In those early days when she could not yet afford an automobile, Dr. Coffey could often be seen on the streetcars or buses in the course of making house calls. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Dr. Coffey and nine other sorors from throughout the South who were doctors or nurses, spent several summers in the 1930s volunteering in the sixteen clinics set up by the sorority in the Mississippi Delta and centered around Bolivar County. Over the course of their visits they served over fifteen hundred family groups.
Dr. Coffey married Benson Meade Boutte, a popular public school teacher (d. 1969), whose brothers Armand and Belton were popular druggists. To their union was born one son, Benson Virgil Boutte, who was born in 1947. Over the course of more than thirty years of private practice in New Orleans and in conjunction with Flint-Goodridge Hospital, she delivered several thousand babies, according one estimate about four to five hundred each year. One interesting incident in her practice is that when the infamous Lee Harvey Oswald traveled to Mexico just two months before the Kennedy assassination, he listed his address on travel documents as 640 South Rampart Street instead of 640 Audubon Street. This sparked an investigation by the FBI into the building, which in actuality had no connection to Oswald and housed The Louisiana Weekly, Dr. Boutte’s office, and that of a black real estate agent. If nothing else it assured Dr. Boutte a place in the files of the FBI and several conspiracy investigators.
After retired from her medical practice, Dr. Boutte continued to work as an instructor at Xavier University in the Health Sciences Department. She represented her branch of the American Medical Women’s Association at the Medical Women’s International Association Meeting in Paris in 1973. She was honored by the National Council of Negro Women with its Mary McLeod Bethune Award in 1983. She retired fully in 1985 after a long and successful career. Dr. Thelma Coffey Boutte on 21 June 1991 at the age of eighty. She was survived by her only sibling, Mrs. Edith Louise Coffey King, a retired schoolteacher and her son, Benson V. Boutte. Her legacy is the long record of little New Orleanians she helped to usher into the world and the healthy mothers to whom she attended.
Jari Honora
Sources: The Collegian (Crane College Annual), 1933; Times-Picayune, 9 May 1983, page 67; Afro-American (Baltimore), 2 October 1937, page 2; “A Record from Mary Ferrell’s Database,” http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do;jsessionid=79824BE98AAB223E49CE6CD9E61EB36D?id=1332
Mr Boutte was my math teacher. Very good teacher
I can’t believe what I’m reading; this kind lady was my aunt :):) yes, my aunt!!!!!! When I was growing up, I spent many days and nights with the family. In ’67 I went into the army and lost contact. When Benson was killed in the store, things fell apart. I would love to find his son, “Benson V.” We grew up together. If anyone can help me please do.
Thank you!
“Creole Gen” continues to delight and inform me, and I often pass on the information to others. This Boutte family that you write about today must be related to Matthieu Boutte and Etnah Rochon Boutte, whom I knew in New York as a child. They were both wonderful, both from New Orleans, both were pharmacists, and they had an apothecary (no, not a drugstore!) in NYC on “Sugar Hill” starting in the 1940s. I always understood that I should call them “Uncle Mathieu” and “Aunt Etnah” though they weren’t blood relatives. Etnah, however, was a godmother to my “real” aunt, Louise Logan, who, in turn was godmother to one of Etnah’s nieces.
Dr. Alexander, Mathieu Virgil Boutté was the uncle of Dr. Coffey-Boutté’s husband, Benson. The Boutté’s in New Orleans actually labeled their drugstore an ‘apothecary’ as well. Mathieu, as you may know, was a leader in several Catholic lay organizations in N.Y.C., along with Judge Myles Paige and others. Thank you for reading CreoleGen!
What a surprise to see Thelma’s face as a younger person than when I knew her. She delivered all six of us siblings. My mother Evelyn Brown Rousseve worked in her office for a time. My dad Numa, Sr painted her portrait on commission.
Her sister Edith Coffey King was my godmother. She and her husband Artemas who had a furniture restoration business in New Iberia gave us a four poster bed when I was a child that I still have.
I remember our family visiting with her parents in New Orleans. I especially remember the wind up victrola that we got to listen to.
Thanks so much for highlighting such a wonderful person. I know her son Benson and her nice Brunette appreciate it too.
I have Boutte and Fortenot relatives in Olivier/New Iberia, LA.
Thank you.
I was one of the first babies Thelma delivered, then she delivered my 2 daughters. I was the first of her babies to use her as an obstetrician. She was always proud of that.
I loved her as a doctor – she was practical & intuitive & was always available to discuss a problem. Her waiting room was always packed & waiting time was horrendous- sometimes as much as 2 hours+. But we all sat there & waited because we knew that the care was individual. And we got to chat with her- there was never any rush.
I think I used her as my example in the way I practiced obstetrics & gynecology; she certainly influenced me a lot, to put it mildly.
Glad to see CreoleGen spot-lighting this ground breaking physician.
She delivered 7 of my mother’s 8 children. By the time number 8 came around she had retired. My mother would speak of Dr. Boutte with such high esteem. Although I have no personal recollection of meeting her she was an inspiration to me through medical school and residency. If things felt difficult for me I would imagine what she had to endure and that would help me to persevere.
Dr. Coffey made an definite imprint in my family as well as my husband’s family. She delivered my mother who is now 91 years old, as well as several other family members. She was my mother-in-law’s doctor, as well. When we visited my in-laws in New Orleans in the heat of summer, and my 9 year old daughter collapsed one afternoon and had a seizure. My mother-in-law called Dr. Coffey, and she came right away to the house and gave us her opinion and told me what to do when we got home. We did what she said, and she was right on. My daughter had a seizure disorder. I will never forget her for that. We were visiting, didn’t have medical coverage in New Orleans, and she was a big comfort to me and my family.
My mother speaks so highly of Dr. Coffey. She made house calls to them and was always there for the family. Although I don’t remember her as a child because I was so young, I feel as though I know her personally when listening to the stories about her from my mother. She was truly a great woman and wonderful asset to the community.
Thank you for this very nice article about Dr. Coffey. Her father and my grandfather were brothers. She was also our family doctor.
When I told my mother about this article she was so excited to hear the name – Thelma Coffey Boutte!!!!
My 91 yearl old mother remembers that Dr. Coffey delived my brother, Louis. He died in November and would have been 70 years old this year. My mother said that Dr. Coffey didn’t drive and that her father dropped her off at my mother’s house in the Seventh Ward to assist in the birth of my brother.
Just found Dr. Boutte’s picture in Xavier’s 1975 yearbook. She was University Physician.
I remember Doctor Thelma Coffey Boutte, she was my attending physician at Flint Goodrich Hospital for the delivery of my daughter Tina. She was a great doctor.
Dr. Boutte was our family doctor. I remember her coming to my house. She was on Staff at Xavier U. When I went there. I really enjoyed this article.
My Mother would take me to Dr. Coffey Boutte’s office on Rampart St. She was so nice and would always lift me up onto her lap. I just Loved her so much.
So strange, I am looking for someone else for my family tree, who pops up but Dr. Coffey, She delivered me back in 1942. It put a smile on my face, then I thought, I thought I wish I could tell my mother I found her, she passed away 2004.
Great work, Jari (distant cousin of yours).