Heroes in Oral Health and Education

Clifton O. Dummett, Theodore E. Bolden, and Joseph L. Henry are three elder heroes of black dentistry, socially committed intellectuals and oral health professionals who opened doors of opportunity for generations of young black men and women in health care and higher education. Dummett describes his own contributions and those of his two colleagues when he observes that the exemplary black dentist takes great interest not only in oral health but also in political and organizational activities and concern for public health. He writes, "It is prophetic that Black dentists of early America should have manifested such profound interest in community, government, and public service activities outside the dental office. At that time those types of activities were viewed as unrelated to professional competency and duty" (1974 JNMA 321).

Clifton O. Dummett, B.Sc., D.D.S., M.Sc.D., M.P.H. was born the youngest of four children in the early 1900s in Georgetown, British Guiana (Guyana, South America). His mother was a nurse and his father a veteran pharmacist and registered dentist. Dummett completed his secondary education in Guyana at Queens College before coming to the United States in 1936, where he attended Howard University in Washington D.C. and Roosevelt University in Chicago, from which he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree. He graduated from Northwestern University Dental School in 1941 and also received the M.Sc.D. in periodontics from Northwestern University. He completed studies in Public Health Dentistry as a Fellow of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, receiving the M.P.H. degree from University of Michigan in 1947. Dummett is a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral Medicine and a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology. He was the first African American to become board certified in periodontology. He has received numerous honorary degrees from institutions of higher education, the most recent from Meharry Medical College.

Dummett began his professional career at Meharry's School of Dentistry, rising in a short time from Assistant Professor to Professor and Chairman of Dental Periodontology, Oral Diagnosis and Oral Medicine, Chairman of the Dental Administration Committee and Deputy Director of Dental Education. Under his administration the dental school was fully approved by the Council on Dental Education of the American Dental Association in 1945, marking the first time that a dental institution primarily for black students had being so designated. He also initiated a chapter of Omicron Kappa Upsilon (OKU) and served as its first president. This was the first time that OKU, the dental scholastic honor fraternity, granted a charter to establish a chapter for black dental students.

In 1947, Dummett was appointed full-time Dean of the School of Dentistry at Meharry, at 28 years of age the youngest person ever to become dean of a U.S. dental school, a record he holds to this day. In 1949, he resigned his deanship to register his opposition to a regional plan for education created by a consortium of southern states, because in his view it was destined to further entrench racial segregation. The same year, he became Chief of Dental Services at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. Under his leadership, the VA Hospital in Tuskegee received approval from the American Dental Association's (ADA) Council on Hospital Dental Services; additionally, the first residency in periodontology in the United States to be approved by the ADA Council on Dental Education was inaugurated. He also established an approved residency-training program in oral surgery, and an approved rotating dental internship program.

Many people perceive dentists to be very limited in their scope, training and orientation, but Dummett's career says otherwise. Dummett organized the first Institute of Public Health in the South, the Tuskegee Health Forum on the Air, the first Seminar on Oral Allergies, the first Seminar on Oral Hemorrhage, and the first Medico-Dental Symposium on Journalism in the Health Professions.

Dummett functioned in major leadership roles outside of the dental academy. He served as an ADA Delegate to the National Citizens Committee for the World Health Organization. A commissioned Major in the United...