Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams

Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams
Born (1885-02-26)February 26, 1885
Delaplane, Virginia
Died August 29, 1940(1940-08-29) (aged 55)
Chicago, Illinois
Education
Occupation Dean of the School and the College of Medicine and Professor of Medicine at Howard University

Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams (February 26, 1885 – August 29, 1940) was a dean at the Howard University College of Medicine from 1929 until his death in 1940. He was the first African American to hold this position at Howard University. He was born in Delaplane, Virginia and died in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to being a medical educator, Adams was a musician. To pay for his education, he taught himself the cornet and saxophone and joined the Lyric Orchestra and Louis Brown’s Orchestra.

Early Life

Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams was born in Delaplane, Virginia. He received his early education at a country school run by his uncle, Robert Adams. His grandmother, Mrs. Amanda Adams, a midwife who had assisted old Dr. Green in delivering hundreds of Negro and white babies, shared with him the secrets of herbal medicine. She was the one who inspired Adams’s interest in science and started his own collection of herbs.[1][2]

When Adams was thirteen, his family moved to Steelton, Pennsylvania. He bought a second-hand cornet, learned to play it with the help of a storekeeper. It was this musical skill that gave him a chance to play a role in various orchestra, and help him pay for the tuition through high school, college and medical school.

Education

When Adams was thirteen, his family moved to Steelton, Pennsylvania. He went to a public school.

In 1907, Adams left Pennsylvania to enter Howard University in Washington, D.C.

In 1911 he received the B.A. degree Magna Cum Laude, from Howard University, a year later the M.A. degree from Columbia University, and in 1924, the M.D. degree from the University of Chicago.[3]

Career

Adams’ career started off when he began teaching in 1905 after graduating from high school. He spent a year substitute teaching in Steelton, Pennsylvania, and then taught one year of seventh grade in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.[1] After graduating from Howard University in 1911, followed by earning his master’s in chemistry the next year, he sat on the faculty board in the chemistry department at Howard. By 1918, he progressed from being an assistant to an associate professor.[1]

In 1919, Adams decided that an education in chemistry was not sufficient enough for his career to thrive and resigned his chair of the chemistry department position to earn a medical degree. After grading from the Rush Medical School of the University of Chicago, he earned an internship in the city of hospital St. Louis and later on became the assistant medical director of the Victory Life Insurance Company from 1927 to 1929.[4] In addition between those years, he went back to teaching neurology and psychiatry to aspiring nursing students at Provident Hospital.[3] In 1929, he was called and received an offer to be appointed dean of Howard University.[5] With this position, Adams became the first African American dean at the Howard University School of Medicine.[6]

As the dean, Adams changed the entire curriculum at Howard University. He began hiring highly-trained professors by offering generous starting salaries.[7] Over the years, he started increasing the standards of acceptance at the university. He received a lot of criticism for this decision, but by the end of his deanship, his claim of educating students to their highest potential was proven true; out of the last four classes that Adams admitted, no student failed annual board examinations, while in the past, at least one student has failed.[7] In his final years as the dean, he proposed the integration between Howard University and Freedman's Hospital. In 1937, the secretary of the department performed an analysis on the future of the hospital with this move. The department thus decided that Howard Medical School should take over control of Freedman's Hospital. Although this move caused some protests, primarily from the city’s Medico-Chirurgical Society, the move to transfer Freedman’s Hospital to Howard Medical School was completed in 1940.[7][8]

Legacy

Aside from his position as dean at Howard University School of Medicine, Adams also worked as a neurology and psychiatry teacher at the Provident Hospital School of Nursing. He served as a member of the National Medical Association, the Board of Directors of the Tuberculosis Association of the District of Columbia, the Advisory Health Council of Washington, the Council on Social Agencies, and the Cook County Physicians Association in Illinois. He was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Appiah, Anthony; Gates, Henry Louis (2005). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517055-9.
  2. ↑ "ADAMS, Numa Pompilius Garfield & Osceola Marie (Macarthy)". commonheroes3. 2016-02-11. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  3. 1 2 Maloney, A. H. (1940). "In Memoriam: Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams". Journal of the National Medical Association. 32 (6): 257–258. ISSN 0027-9684. PMC 2624496.
  4. ↑ "Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams". The Journal of Negro History. 25 (4): 586–588. 1940.
  5. ↑ Jr, Everett Jenkins (2001-06-01). Pan-African Chronology III: A Comprehensive Reference to the Black Quest for Freedom in Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia, 1914–1929. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5038-1.
  6. ↑ Brown, Nikki L. M.; Stentiford, Barry M. (2008). The Jim Crow Encyclopedia: Greenwood Milestones in African American History. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-34181-6.
  7. 1 2 3 "Adams, Numa Pompilius Garfield (1885–1940), physician and medical educator | American National Biography". doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1200005.
  8. 1 2 Krapp, Kristine (1999). Notable Black American Scientists. Detroit: Gale Research. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-7876-2789-8.
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