Uncrowned Community Builders

Dr. Juanita G. Pitts is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. She graduated from Englewood High School and Wilson Junior College of Chicago. She completed studies at Livingstone College in North Carolina with a double major, receiving a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology. She was a teaching assistant at Tuskegee Institute where she pursued a M.S. in Biochemistry and conducted studies in Dr. George Washington Carver's lab. After working as an instructor in biological sciences at Livingstone College, Dr. Pitts received a fellowship to the Department of Biochemistry at Howard University in Washington, D.C. There she worked at various job including lab instructor in neuroanatomy, lab assistant in biochemistry, and departmental secretary for the Department of Microbiology. She completed her medical degree in 1954.

Dr. Pitts and Julian O. Carroll, M.D., who also received the medical doctorate from Howard, were married and moved to Rochester. She completed her internship and residency at Highland Hospital and later with her husband, opened a joint practice providing complete family care. Incorporating time for her practice with raising seven children, made Dr. Pitts aware of the lack of community day care for working parents. She called upon family members, friends and the community to found the Community Child Care Center. The Center was staffed by professional and paraprofessionals and was financed by family, friends and small businesses and has been in operation for 32 years. Dr. Pitts was later awarded a Headstart grant to work among migrant children of the surrounding county.

While attending the University of Rochester to pursue a master's degree in community health, she also worked for the New York State Department of Mental Health. In subsequent years she organized and executed two projects related to community health: screening for Sickle Cell Anemia along with genetic counseling and screening for hypertension and cardiovascular risk factors. Her program, in conjunction with the American Heart Association, brought the first Mobile Health unit to the city, testing for such risk factors as cholesterol, blood sugar levels and blood pressure and providing EKGs.

She served as a consultant for three years to a Sickle Cell project on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She also continued to make house calls, and assisted several other physicians with their private practices. She volunteered for other community concerns and performed physical examinations for the Monroe County Health Department, the Rochester City School District and was Emergency Physician for the Rochester Youth Detention Center.

The President of Livingstone College and the Dean of Howard University also asked her to conduct the local admissions interviews of Western New York for the schools. Through Rochester's Mayor's office, she became a member and was later nominated as a Trustee and served as Vice President of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. She has also served on the master's thesis review committee for students of Christian Education at Colgate Rochester Divinity School.

Dr. Pitts left Rochester in 1979 to continue her career with New York State at the Jane N. Adams Developmental Center in Perrysburg, New York and then at the Gowanda Psychiatric Center. She retired from service with New York State in 1984. Since then she has actively promoted the advancement of Frederick Douglass' memory and was a founder of Friends of Frederick Douglass, Inc. Her drive to name the Rochester park area between South and Mt. Hope Avenues, which marks the site of the Douglass homestead, touches his cemetery plot and includes his Bronze statue, was realized on March 16, 1993 when the area was renamed Frederick Douglass Memorial Square. Dr. Pitts was recently recognized as an official tour guide for Rochester and Auburn, New York in the book by Charles Blockson: The Underground Railroad.

She maintains membership in numerous organizations including: Beta Kappa Chi Honorary Scientific Society; Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.; National Medical Association; American Medical Association; Alumni Organizations of Livingstone College and Howard University; Rochester Urban League; National Council of Negro Women; and the NAAC.

Her list of awards and recognitions are numerous and include: the Empire State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs Representative Service Awards; Community Service Award from Daughters of ELKS, IBPOE; National Sojourner Truth Award through Rochester Genesee Valley Business and Professional Women's Club; Certificate for contributions to the Sickle Cell Project from Easton Community Neighborhood Center; Named Mother of the Festival by P.A.C.E. (Pan African Cultural Event); Charles T. Lunsford Award for Meritorious Community Service; 1980 Outstanding Community Educator by the Sister Clara Muhammed School; Award for Excellence in Medicine by United Church Ministries; First Black woman with a Practice in Rochester Community; Delta Dear of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and many, many others

She was actively involved with the Christian Education Board and Youth of the A.M.E. Zion Church and established the Pitts Pre-Kindergarten Program of cultural enrichment and worked with the ""Buds of Promise.""