In 1891 it was rare for any woman to become a board-certified physician, but when Halle Tanner Dillon passed the Alabama State Medical Examination, even the New York Times took notice. While some southern newspapers scoffed at the idea of a black woman even applying to take the exam, the Times noted that Johnson passed this “unusually severe” ten-day written exam to become “not only the first colored female physician, but the first woman of any race” to officially practice medicine in Alabama.
Halle Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1864, the eldest daughter of nine children born to Benjamin Tucker Tanner and Sarah Elizabeth Tanner. The Tanners were a prominent family whose home in Philadelphia often welcomed visitors and was often a meeting place for political and cultural discussion groups. Halle was well educated and as a young girl became familiar with the work of prominent African-American intellectuals. She worked with her father on the Christian Recorder, a publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he was a minister.