When Meta Loretta Christy was born October 2, 1895, in Kokomo, Indiana, to parents John F. and Arminda Christy (a schoolteacher and a dressmaker, respectively), would anyone have expected her to achieve distinction as a “first” in the nation’s medical history? Probably not ... and yet she did.

John and Arminda both were descendants of free African Americans who settled in Indiana from Newberry, South Carolina. Meta’s father died in 1905, 10 years after her birth, from, according to his death certificate, “muscular rheumatism, immediate cause of heart exhaustion.” After graduating from Kokomo High School in 1915, Meta left the city in 1917 to study at the Massachusetts College of Osteopathy in Boston, spending her school breaks with her mother in Kokomo. Her mother moved that year from North Union Street to the home at 917 E. Jefferson St. Meta transferred to Philadelphia College of Infirmary and Osteopathy (PICO) to complete her studies, graduating in 1921 as the first African American doctor of osteopathic medicine in the United States.

After graduation, Meta lived with her mother until Arminda’s death in 1924 from, as her death certificate said, “acute suppurative appendicitis and localized peritonitis.” Meta herself suffered from a multitude of ailments, as mentioned in the Kokomo Tribune several times from 1913 to 1925, when she had an appendectomy. Her brother Oran also had an appendectomy at some point, saved by surgery as well. In an article published by PICO (now Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine [PCOM]), historian Carol Benenson Perloff surmised that all of Meta’s own illnesses combined with her family’s poor health contributed to her drive to become a doctor herself. An article in the Kokomo Tribune dated March 6, 1926, noted that Dr. Meta Christy had accompanied her brother Oran to his home in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

An article in the Albuquerque Journal on April 3, 1929, stated that five osteopaths, including Meta, had passed their tests taken before the state board of osteopathy in Albuquerque. In her new home, Dr. Christy’s practice included African American and underprivileged white patients who were not allowed treatment in the local hospital. Renting a room for $20 a month in a boarding house owned by Joseph and Maggie Marable, Dr. Christy treated patients in the same house she resided in. The practice continued for the rest of her career in the same location.

Meta served on the board of directors of the New Mexico Osteopathic Medical Association in the 1940s. In 1955, Meta was one of four osteopathic doctors to be awarded a certificate of merit by the organization. The very next year, she was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the association. Meta passed away in 1968 and was noted by the Las Vegas Optic as a “widely known osteopathic physician.”

In 1995, the PCOM Student National Medical Association established the Meta L. Christy Award in “recognition of exemplary practice of osteopathic medicine, service to the community, and inspiration to future doctors of osteopathic medicine.”

In 2010, as part of the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative, the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division erected an historic marker about half a mile from her home and practice. In 2021, the PCOM approved renaming a college residential building to the Meta Christy House, and honored Meta with an article in the Digest Magazine to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the graduation of Dr. Meta L. Christy, DO, the first African American student at PCOM and the first African American doctor of osteopathic medicine in the nation.