This fascinating image, appropriate for Black History Month, is a 7.5-inch by 4.5-inch professional promotional card of Dr. James A. Evans of the Mississippi Delta during the period 1910-1920, announcing the opening of his dental practice. Typical of announcements of medical and dental practices, especially in the African American community, the card has a photograph of this young dentist wearing a dress coat and bow tie. It lists his phone number and his office location at 405 Main Street in Greenwood as well as his “branch office” in the somewhat distant Delta community of Alligator. The card relates the state of the art of dentistry in the early twentieth century in describing his work: “Gold Crowns, Bridge Work, Plates, Painless Extraction of Teeth, All Classes of Fillings and In-lays, Diseases of the mouth treated. ALL WORK GUARANTEED.”
Dr. Evans was born in 1888, the son of biracial Edmond R. Evans (b. 1856), a Columbus grocery store merchant and Cordelia Johnston Evans (1858-1936), a music teacher.1 Census records indicate that Dr. Evans had obtained his dental degree and license by 1910, and he appears to have afterwards opened his practice in Greenwood and Alligator. Both towns had large African American populations, and thus, despite prevailing racial segregation, Dr. Evans would have enjoyed a large patient population and clientele. He appears to have remained in the Greenwood area the rest of his professional life. The Greenwood City Directory of 1931 lists him practicing dentistry in Greenwood at 109 ½ E. Johnson R2-4 and residing at 616 Avenue H in Greenwood with his wife Hattie B. Evans.2 Census records of 1930 and 1940 reveal him practicing dentistry in Greenwood. He and Hattie had three children, Owney, Willie, and Callie.3
The first African American to obtain a dental degree in the United States was Robert Tanner Freeman, DDS, who graduated in 1869 from the Harvard School of Dentistry. However, enrollment opportunities for dental training during that period were extremely limited for African Americans, who were largely confined to predominantly Black Howard University and Meharry Medical College. Howard University Dental School was established in 1881, and Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry was established in 1886. After their inception and into the mid-twentieth century, these two dental schools prepared and graduated the majority of Black dentists in Mississippi. In 1895, the National Association of Colored Physicians, Dentists, and Pharmacists, now the National Medical Association, was established in Atlanta, with Robert F. Boyd, MD, DDS, as its first president. At the time, double degrees were not uncommon, as the first class to graduate from the school of dentistry at Meharry were already MDs. Dr. Boyd had extensive connections to Mississippi, first practicing medicine in New Albany after graduating from Central Tennessee College’s Meharry medical department in 1882.4
Greenwood is named after Choctaw Chief Greenwood Leflore and is located near the confluence of the Yazoo and Yalobusha Rivers. The county seat of Leflore County, the town long served as a vital trading community for both river traffic and railroads. Alligator, a community located in Bolivar County, was established in 1883 with a physician Dr. Dunn as one of the first settlers. The town took its name from Alligator Lake, a lake in the town which had a large number of alligators swimming in its waters. If any of my readers have further information on Dr. Evans, I encourage you to contact me. If you have an old or even somewhat recent photograph of interest to Mississippi physicians, please send it to me at drluciuslampton@gmail.com or by snail mail to the Journal. - Lucius M. “Luke” Lampton, MD; JMSMA Editor