William Porter Norcom

Born in 1885 in Portsmouth, Virginia, Wiliam Porter Norcom earned his BA from Yale in 1911. His father, born in Edenton, North Carolina, was the principal of Black schools in Portsmouth. Norcom attended high school in New Haven. At Yale, he earned a Berkeley Premium in Latin Composition his freshman year. He also received the honor of a second dispute appointment his junior and senior years. He was one of the founding members of Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. After his Yale graduation, Norcom attended medical school at the University of Michigan from 1911 to 1914. In 1914, he married Rebecca DeGraphinreid, a 1910 graduate of Fisk University, and they had two children. Norcom completed his MD at Howard University in 1917, where he was a member of Sigma Pi Phi. Norcom interned in the Freedmen's Hospital (later Howard University Hospital) in Washington, DC in 1917.

From 1917 to 1927, Norcom was a physician and a surgeon in New Haven. He then moved to Brooklyn, where he practiced medicine from 1927 until his death in 1948. During World War II, he served as a captain of the Medical Corps, 3d Separate Battalion, Infantry, in the New York National Guard. He was a member of the Medical Society of the County of Kings and the Medical Association. Norcom was active in Black fraternal societies in both New Haven and Brooklyn, including the Prince Hall Masons and the Elks. He was a member of the Dixwell Congregational Church in New Haven and of Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn. Norcom died in 1948 and was buried in Brooklyn.