The beginning of the Twentieth Century saw the Black practitioners of Brooklyn sharing monthly meetings with their colleagues in Manhattan as the Medico-Chirurgical Society. Members kept themselves informed of current practices and promoted the recruitment of people of color into the professions. They also took time to honor the accomplishments of their own. The first surgeon recorded to have successfully performed open heart surgery, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, was recognized by that group in 1905.

Late in 1905, The Brooklynites decided to organize a society of their own in what was now a separate borough of the city. Physicians Peter W. Ray, Verina Morton-Jones, Fredrick M. Jacobs, Roland Johnson, Richard Banbury, William Hunter, William Waller, dentists Walter Beekman, Louis Delsarte and pharmacists Estive Mars and Frank Chambers formed the Provident Clinical Society.

Social and community concerns were high on the list of priorities for the new society, as many members were already activists in the causes of human rights, women's suffrage and general works for the social good.

Dr. Verina Morton-Jones organized the Women's Suffrage League and the Lincoln Settlement, the later being a social service agency for the black community founded in 1908. The first of its kind, the organization was largely run by the members of that community in a self-sufficient manner. Mary White Ovington, a white activist collaborated in this project, and later went on to become a founding member of the NAACP. The Lincoln Settlement later merged with the Urban League in 1927.

As a physician Dr. Morton-Jones was a respected obstetritian and pediatritian and owned properties in Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant which she used to help finance her social projects. Dr. Jones died in 1943 at the age of 86, after retiring from public service at age 82.

Dr Fredrick M. Jacobs was both a physician and minister-pastor of the Fleet Street A.M.E. Zion church. A native of Camden, S.C., Jacobs graduated with honors from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1884 going on to recieve a Doctor of Divinity from Livingston College, a Black institution in Salisbury N.C., in 1895. After moving to Brooklyn in 1897, he studied at the Long Island College Hospital, graduating in 1901 and going on to practice for 26 years before his death in 1931. So successful was his practice that Jacobs was compelled to resign from the ministry in 1908. He did however maintain membership in the Elks, Knights of Pythias and other fraternal-civic groups.

Dr. Walter Beekman is believed to be perhaps the first university trained dentist to practice in Brooklyn, having graduated from what was to become Columbia University's College of Dentistry. A known activist in the Bedford Stuyvesant community, Dr. Beekman was a member of the Comus Club, a collection of leading black buisnessman and professionals formed in 1911, and affiliated with the Stuyvesant Avenue Buisnessmen's Assn., formed in the Depression to promote cooperative enterprise. He was also vice president of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief believed to be the oldest black mutual relief society in the country. Dr. Beekman died in 1962.