Joyce Elaine Young

Joyce Howell Young, M.D., daughter of Lloyd Marion Howell and Addie Belle Howell, started what she called her “Improbable Journey” on March 22, 1934. Born to two parents with degrees in teaching, she learned the power and value of education at an early age. She enjoyed the creative freedom of art and photography just like her mother. She loved learning and knew she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. She was a life long learner, finding new and different ways to re-engineer herself at different stages of life.
She grew up during the time of segregation, initially attending a segregated elementary school in Cincinnati, Ohio. As the walls of segregation started coming down, she became one of six kids to integrate Walnut Hills. Walnut Hills had a challenging curriculum that her parents knew would challenge and prepare her for the future. After graduating from high school at 16, she attended Fisk University and graduated with a B.A. degree. Afterwards, she attended the Woman’s Medical College of PA where she was the first and only African American student in her class. She interned at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton and performed her residency in pediatrics and internal medicine at Meharry Medical College’s Hubbard Hospital.
On the 25th of June 1960, she married C. Milton Young, III, M.D. They moved to Louisville, KY to start their practices and family. Louisville would not allow black doctors to practice out of office buildings, and blacks could only go to black hospitals. So with the help of her parents, they bought a house that enabled them to start their practice in its basement. With the office in the house, it allowed her to raise her children and run her practice. Patients would come in and sometimes see her boys playing on the steps or just sitting there greeting them. She later worked at the Child Evaluation Center in genetic and developmental disorders, Park Duvalle Neighborhood Health Center as Medical Director, KY Cabinet of Families and Children as Medical Consultant, and Social Security Disabilities as Medical Consultant.
She was active in the community and civil rights. Some of her many achievements to eliminate segregation and improve integration were to integrate hospitals and schools. She worked to obtain hospital privileges for African American physicians and desegregate the hospital rooms. The hospitals used to put African American patients into single rooms so that the white patient would not have to share a room with them. She used the rational that you should make people pay for their prejudices instead of charging people who are being discriminated against and are less able to afford it. She was the first African American woman selected for the public school board and later became chairperson. As chairperson, she presided over the desegregation of the school system in Louisville, ensuring that the plan developed and presented to the court was the best possible plan. This plan may be the only public school desegregation plan still considered effective today. She worked to develop the magnet school concept that brought student diversity from across Louisville while providing an advanced academic curriculum.
As if this wasn’t enough, she also served the com-munity in other capacities as a member of the NAACP task force for desegregation of higher education, the Lincoln Foundation Board, the River Region Mental Health and Retardation Board, the Fall City Medical Society (President and member), various church committees including the Mid-Kentucky Presbytery Com-mission on Ministry, and the Kentucky Human Rights Commission.
She departed this life on September 17, 2015 at Saints Mary and Elizabeth Hospital in Louisville, KY. She leaves to cherish her memory: her brother, LTC (Ret.) Raymond Keels Howell; three sons, Milton, Lloyd and Dr. Christopher Young; daughters-in-law, Karen, Angela and Melissa Young; eight grandchildren, Coleman, Jordan, Christopher, Kathryn, Benjamin and Quinn Young, Kristin and Nicholas Rider; three nephews, Raymond, Raughn and Lawrence Howell; and many other family members and friends.
Her radiant smile and positive spirit will be missed.