Alexander Thomas Augusta - Later Years

Later Years

Mustering out of the service on October 1866, Augusta accepted an assignment with the Freedman's Bureau, heading the agency's Lincoln Hospital in Savannah, Georgia. While there, he encouraged African American self-help, urged the freedmen to support independent institutions, and gained respect from the city's white physicians.

Augusta returned to private practice in Washington, D.C. He was attending surgeon to the Smallpox Hospital in Washington in 1870. He also served on the staff of the local Freedman's Hospital. Augusta taught anatomy in the recently organized medical department at Howard University from November 8, 1868 to July 1877, becoming the first African American appointed faculty of the school and also of any medical college in the U.S. He had received honorary degrees of M.D. in 1869 and A.M. in 1871 from Howard.

Despite his accomplishments, he was repeatedly refused entry to the local society of physicians, an affront that he feared would impede the progress of younger African American physicians in the city. He died in Washington on December 21, 1890, interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery he is buried in Section 1, Lot 124A, map grid G/33.