Background
Prudhomme was born in Opelousas, Louisiana. When Charles was three years old, his father developed tuberculosis and the family moved to Denver, Colorado. Along the way, the family stopped in Kansas City, Missouri where Charles and his mother stayed while his father continued to Denver.
Education
Charles received his schooling in Kansas City, became a baseball player, and graduated from high school, second in his class. He applied for and received a scholarship to Howard University, a historically black college, in Washington, District of Columbia, and over the next six years he attended college and worked. He graduated in 1931 and entered the Howard University College of Medicine.
During his years at Howard, medical students attended lectures at Saint Elizabeth"s Hospital, a federally funded psychiatric hospital for mental patients.
Career
1908-1988), an African-American physician and psychoanalyst entered the field of psychiatry in the 1930s. He served as the vice-president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1970-1971, the first African-American to gain elected office in the organization. Prudhomme entered the University of Kansas but remained only a short time.
Due to segregation laws, he was not allowed to take certain courses or use the university"s facilities.
He received his Doctor of Medicine in 1935. He interned in internal medicine at the Freedman"s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital) in Washington, District of Columbia. Prudhomme attended his classes and wrote his senior paper on suicide which was published in 1938 in the journal, The Psychoanalytic Review.
Prudhomme planned to do a psychiatric residency at Saint Elizabeth"s but he was told that federal legislation, which established the hospital in 1855, enforced segregation. In 1937, he obtained a fellowship at the University of Chicago but was dismayed to learn that he was assigned to work at the Provident Hospital, which provided medical care to black people.
He returned to Washington, District of Columbia to work at Saint Elizabeth"s, but he was unsuccessful.
In 1940, using his contacts with then United States. Senator Harry Truman, arrangements were made for Prudhomme to go to Tuskegee, Alabama, and work at the Veterans Administration hospital for black veterans. He met many black psychiatrists who had been trained in Boston by Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953), the first American black psychiatrist. Prudhomme remained at Tuskegee until 1943 when the United States. Army transferred him to Howard University to head the Army Specialized Training Unit.
While at Howard, he registered at the Washington School of Psychiatry to study and train under Doctor Freida Fromm-Reichmann, a German psychiatrist.
Prudhomme was admitted to the Washington Psychoanalytic Society in 1958, but only after he was required to complete additional training. Prudhomme"s writings discuss his experiences with racism, which he encountered throughout his professional career.
Prudhomme practiced psychoanalysis in Washington, District of Columbia for many years and taught at Howard University. He often pointed to the importance of cultural patterns in the practice of psychiatry.
He died of a heart attack in 1988.
Membership
Doctor Benjamin Karpman, a psychoanalyst and forensic psychiatrist, was a member of the hospital staff, and a professor of psychiatry at Howard.