Joycelyn Elders is a physician and health administrator who serving in the Clinton administration as the first African American and second woman Surgeon General of the United States. She was trained as a pediatrician, and became a faculty member at the University of Arkansas Medical Center (UAMC) in 1967. As Surgeon General, she was best known for her discussions of sensitive issues like drug legalization, teenage sexuality, and distribution of contraception in schools.

Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones in Schaal, Arkansas, and later changed her name to Minnie Joycelyn Lee. She grew up in a poor family; her father worked as a sharecropper. Elders received her B.S. degree in Biology from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1952. She then worked as a ...