Rachel Boone Keith

Boone worked two years at Detroit Receiving Hospital, and joined the staff at Detroit Memorial Hospital in 1954, had a private internal medicine practice for many years,^[5][6] and served on the Michigan Board of Medicine, and was active with the Detroit chapter of the NAACP and other organizations.^[1][7] She was also a prominent member of Detroit's Tabernacle Baptist Church.^[8] She and Judge Keith were guests at Detroit's Bal Africain, an art benefit event, in 1973, including dinner with the Tanzanian ambassador, Paul Bomani.^[9]

In 1953, Rachel Boone married a lawyer, Damon Keith, who became a noted federal judge.^[10][11] They had three daughters: Cecile, Debbie, and Gilda. Rachel Boone Keith died in 2007, aged 83 years, in Detroit.^[1][12] Congressman John Conyers gave a tribute to Keith in the Congressional Record soon after her death.^[13] Later that year, she was honored posthumously with a LifeLine Award from the Wayne State University School of Nursing.^[14]

Her papers are held, along with her husband's, in the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.^[15] There is a Rachel Boone Keith Prize Fund at the Boston University School of Medicine, to provide support for African-American women medical students at the school.^[16][17]