English: Gravesite of U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Augusta in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., June 5, 2020. The U.S. Army's first commissioned Black physician, Augusta began his medical career in Canada during the 1850s, after being denied admission to medical school in the United States. In 1863, he wrote to President Abraham Lincoln asking to serve as a doctor for the United States Colored Troops (USCT)—the segregated U.S. Army regiments that served in the Civil War. Commissioned as a major, Augusta served as a regimental surgeon and then as the surgeon-in-charge of what later became Howard University Hospital). After the war, he joined the nearly all-white medical faculty at Howard University, becoming the first Black professor of medicine in the United States. (U.S. Army photo by Elizabeth Fraser / Arlington National Cemetery / released)