Alonzo Holly
Dr. Alonzo Potter Burgess Holly (1865–1943) was a Haitian doctor and diplomat. He served as Haiti’s consul to the Bahamas in the early 1900s and later lived in Florida, where he led the Florida State Medical Association.
He was born September 21, 1865, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was the son of James Theodore Holly, the first Black Episcopal bishop, who had moved to Haiti from the United States and founded the Orthodox Apostolic Church there.
Alonzo Holly studied at Lycée Petion, Harrison College in Barbados, Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Atherstone, England, and the University of Cambridge, where he studied classics and religion and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1882. He studied medicine at New York Homeopathic Medical College from 1884 to 1888, becoming the school’s first Black graduate.
He returned to Haiti in 1892, ran a public health clinic in Gonaïves, and started a Mutual Relief Society. He was Haiti’s consul to the Bahamas from 1900 to 1903 and stayed there for a time afterward, serving as President of the Board of Trustees of the Boynton Normal and Industrial School.
He moved to Florida to practice medicine. In 1914, he spoke on hygiene to Miami’s Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which the Florida Metropolis called timely and full of sensible ideas. In 1942, he presented a paper at the 12th Homeopathic Pan American Congress about a uterine cancer treatment he had used successfully for years; this topic later appeared in a newspaper quiz in 1944.
Holly was president of the Dade County Medical Association, president of the Florida State Medical Association, and a fellow of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association. He also supported Haiti, criticizing a British diplomat’s claims about cannibalism in 1886. He corresponded with W. E. B. Du Bois to promote unity between Black Americans and Haitians and helped found the Patriotic Union of Haiti, modeled after the NAACP.
Alonzo Holly died November 28, 1943, at age 78. In 1938, New York Medical College awarded him a gold diploma.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:30 (CET).