Margaret Morgan Lawrence

Margaret Morgan Lawrence
Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence
Born	Margaret Cornelia Morgan (1914-08-10) August 10, 1914 (age 103) New York City
Alma mater	Cornell University Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York State Psychiatric Institute
Known for	Researching the presence and development of strength in young Black families Author, The Mental Health Team in Schools (1971) Author, Young Inner City Families (1975) Subject of Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer (1988)
Scientific career
Fields	Child and adolescent psychiatry Scientist
Institutions	Retired from Columbia University in 1984 Developmental Psychiatry Service for Infants and Children, Harlem Hospital

Margaret Cornelia Morgan Lawrence (born August 10, 1914) is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, gaining those qualifications in 1948. Her work included clinical care, teaching, and research, particularly into the presence and development of ego strength in inner-city families. Lawrence studied young children identified as "strong" by their teachers in Georgia and Mississippi, as well as on sabbatical in Africa in 1973, writing two books on mental health of children and inner-city families. Lawrence was chief of the Developmental Psychiatry Service for Infants and Children (and their families) at Harlem Hospital for 21 years, as well as associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, retiring in 1984.

Lawrence grew up an only living child of Mary Elizabeth (Smith) Morgan, a schoolteacher, and the Reverend Sandy Alonzo Morgan, an Episcopal minister. They lived in Richmond, Virginia but traveled to New York City for Lawrence's birth, as their first child had died in the local segregated hospital. Lawrence said, "In childhood and through adolescence I said I wanted to become a doctor because of the death of my only sibling, a brother, at eleven months, and two years before I was born. Someone like me could have saved him." After Lawrence's birth, the family returned to Virginia, then moved to heavily segregated Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Because she wanted to become a doctor, Lawrence moved to Harlem, New York City as a teenager in the 1920s to attend Wadleigh High School for Girls and live with family. Lawrence gained a scholarship from the National Council of the Episcopal Church and attended Cornell University from 1932 to 1936. She was the only African American undergraduate, denied a place in the segregated dormitory. Lawrence supported herself by working first as a maid to a white family, living in the attic, and later as a laboratory assistant.