Committed from the first to promoting the science and art of medicine, to improving public health, and to representing the men and women of African descent legally engaged in the practice of medicine in the United States, the NMA at the end of its first century remained predominantly African American, enrolling more than two-thirds of the nation's sixteen thousand black physicians, who in turn comprised 2.8 percent of all U.S. physicians. NMA's founding president, Robert F. Boyd (1858–1912) of Nashville, and vice-president, Daniel Hale Williams of Chicago, worked to make the association a major force for improving the quality of life of African Americans. In 1909, C. V. Roman (1864–1934) launched the Journal of the National Medical Association, the oldest continuous black publication in America. Led by physicians such as John A. Kenney (1874–1950) and W. Montague Cobb (1904–1990 ...