EP 7 Ida Gray - Hands That Healed | Women and Resistance

In this episode of Women and Resistance, hosts @Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq., and Adesoji Iginla sit down with the embodied voice of Dr Ida Gray Nelson Rollins, the first African American woman to earn a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in the United States, and the first Black dentist of any gender to practice in Chicago.

We explore the inspiring life of Dr Ida Gray, the first African American woman dentist, highlighting her journey from adversity to professional excellence and her impact on the community.

She was an orphaned infant handed to an aunt who couldn’t read her own name. 

We trace her path from a working-class childhood in Reconstruction-era Cincinnati.

We examine her legacy and connect her story to Idlewild, Michigan’s “Black Eden,” the Black women’s club movement, and the oral health disparities that persist in Black communities today.

Takeaways

*Your beginnings do not determine your destiny.
*Excellence in your work can open doors regardless of race or gender.
*Mentoring others is a responsibility and a legacy.
*Resilience and focus are key to overcoming societal barriers.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Women and Resistance
01:13 Ida Gray: A Journey of Resilience
03:21 Early Life and Challenges
07:59 The Role of Community and Education
13:50 Path to Dentistry: Overcoming Barriers
20:11 Breaking Ground in Dentistry
22:36 Education and Training in Dentistry
23:28 The Journey to Becoming a Dentist
25:27 Breaking Barriers in Dentistry
26:35 Establishing a Practice in Cincinnati
29:00 Marriage and Relocation to Chicago
31:31 Building a New Reputation in Chicago
35:03 Navigating Grief and New Beginnings
36:29 The Joys of Idlewild, Michigan
37:47 Legacy and Reflection
40:37 Mentorship and Community Building

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:00.841)
Yes, greetings, greetings, and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am your host, Adesso G. Ginla, and with me as usual is Aya Fobera and Ellie Esquire. Before she goes into character. So, Women and Resistance is a series we do where we showcase the contribution of women towards the advancement of black people.

Tonight on Women and Resistance, we sit across a woman who has put her hands in the mouths of people who would have thought less of her in the times before.

And she did this for 40 years in two cities through two marriages until they she retired on her terms. But this person did not grow up thinking she would be able to do that. She was handed off to an aunt in her infancy, the aunt who particularly could not read. So to get her here would be a fit in itself.

But not only that, she also went ahead and became I'll let her tell you what she became. So let's welcome tonight Ida Gray. Welcome.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:28.942)
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:33.075)
It's a pleasure having you. So, Ida Gray, for those who might just come across that name for the very first time, I know I did when I was reading up on your rise to fame or claim to fame, as they would say. But then walk us through who Ida Grey is.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:00.299)
Well, again, thank you for having me this evening. And thank you for being honest enough to admit that you indeed had not heard of me. And that's one of the reasons I'm very grateful for this opportunity this evening to have this conversation, even in this manner.

It has actually been my great fortune that for every decade since I became a dentist, and I graduated from the University of Michigan and Arbor School of Dentistry in eighteen ninety. And since I became a dentist, every decade there has been

A book that has come out that has a paragraph or has a few words about me. So though there's not been a book written about me per se, I am grateful that new generations get introduced to me and to the work that I was able to do. And to the extent that history sometimes repeats itself.

And seeing, for those of you who are watching here in the United States of America, where of course I was born and lived and died, seeing the assaults on education and access to education, that this new this government is mounting again, my story I believe has even more relevance now for those who may.

Buckle under the new pressures that are being applied. So let me start at the very beginning. You already shared quite a bit of my story.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:09.473)
it it it it's it truly has been a storied life, and I'm very grateful for the life that I was able to live and the road that I was able to travel, and it's not one that I don't think anyone could have foreseen when I was born. For you see, I was born in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Little small town of Clarksville, Tennessee. And it was the spring of eighteen sixty seven. Some have pinned the date as March fourth, but you know, that is arguable.

Adesoji Iginla (04:50.493)
Records. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:54.705)
And very important when you talk to those of us who lived in a different time to not just hear the stories but to

Make sure that you are centering the stories in the times historically of what was happening, you see. and so to be born in Tennessee, which is of course a slave state, right, in the spring of 1867.

Adesoji Iginla (05:24.469)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:29.921)
With the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Civil War just ending, you see what I'm where I'm coming from. And so it had barely been two years since the Thirteenth Amendment, and the ink was not even dry on it, really. And so things were not.

Adesoji Iginla (05:39.699)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:53.046)
We're not well for us in Tennessee. And of course, we know Tennessee became the birthplace for the Ku Klux Klan not too long after. Now, my mother was Jenny Gray, a black woman who was a teenager, unmarried.

Adesoji Iginla (05:54.827)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:21.611)
I suppose in polite company I would say impregnated by a white man.

Again, let's go back to the times raped by a white man who will play no role in my life whatsoever. I could tell you nothing about the man.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:48.077)
Who sired me, I suppose. Not his name, not him taking any part in my raising for one moment. Of course, not a visit. I never knew him. And even when I was asked that question at 86 years old, the best I could say is, he was white and he was absent.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:20.075)
Well, my mother named me Ida.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:28.535)
But even my mother was not to see me grow. I do not know the circumstances under which she died. But she died when I was still so young that I have no memory of her at all. Some say I was an infant. Some say I was a couple of years old. But I have zero memory, not a hint of a memory of

Earth Mother.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:02.177)
That is the plain truth of how my life began. Aha, but for young people listening to me today, how your life begins does not have to determine how your life goes or how it ends. Because here I am.

Decades after I have moved on to the ancestral realm. And here you are all calling me back to have a conversation with me. And again, I am grateful, but I'm here to bring encouragement.

Adesoji Iginla (08:32.488)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:46.517)
As you can see.

My childhood was one where before I could even get my bearings, I was alone.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:03.319)
But you know, and this is something that our community must remember, must think of the think of that word even as I said it. Something, ooh, something fell in my spirit. Remember. Members. And then re-re bringing them back together.

Well, let me make my point so you understand where I'm going.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:39.625)
In the South, amongst the black community, one thing was for sure, nobody was discarding a child.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:53.186)
There were always networks of women in our community who refused to let a child go unclaimed. And so arrangements were made, that is how we said it. Arrangements were made for me to go and live with a relative of my mother's named Caroline Gray.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:19.179)
We must remember a time when we made arrangements for our children, when we made arrangements for our elderly, when we made arrangements for our sick, when we made arrangements for ourselves.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:43.884)
Well

Aunt Carolyn

Didn't have an education herself. She was unmarried, had three mouths of her own to feed, and her son Howard had a disability. Now why in the world would Aunt Carolyn take in another mouth? But you know.

You cannot understand who I became without first understanding my Aunt Carolyn, the only mother that I knew. She was born about eighteen thirty-three in Clarksville, same as me. She was born enslaved.

By the time I came to her, they say she was about thirty-five years old.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:48.888)
Could not read. She could not write her own name. She was a seamstress by trade. And her children, Howard, Susan, and Mary, Mary was the closest in age to me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:06.891)
And there was never enough food in that house as hard as Aunt Caroline worked. And so she took in foster kids when she could. Because that is simply what the woman in my family did. You never left a child to drift.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:34.816)
Well

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:41.313)
Soon after I came to live with Aunt Carolyn, she packed up her whole household, her three children, and me this extra mouth.

Although I was to become an extra pair of hands and make myself useful. But at that point, truly an extra mouth, a burden, though she would never look at me in that light. But Aunt Carolyn moved us from Clarksville across the river to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:23.499)
Was a union state. We supposedly didn't have the, you know, they supposedly didn't have slaves in the same way as Tennessee. But let me tell you something: just because they were on the side of the union doesn't mean that black folk were welcome either. Don't get that confused.

Adesoji Iginla (13:33.331)
Après. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:50.068)
Cincinnati was not a paradise for black families. Free state, yes, but freedom and welcome are not the same word.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:07.945)
Aunt Carolyn and her little brood, we settled in an area called the Red Light District. Now you know what a red light district is? You don't? Well, I'm sure some of your audience do. And if they do, I wish I could have more of you in conversation with me. What is a red light district? I'm gonna check in with you and see if any of you know what that is.

But I'll tell you what, I'll give you a hint. We lived on George Street in the Red Light District. It was at the edge of what the respectable folks of the city.

The the the the the at the edge of of of the park where respectable folks would live, you understand. But it was the only place that a poor single black mother with four mouths in her care and no husband could afford to live. We still have those kind of problems today, don't we?

Adesoji Iginla (14:58.09)
Hm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:21.835)
Having to raise children in places that may not be the best environments for their well-being, but nonetheless, that is all you can afford. Like I said, my Aunt Carolyn could not read a word on a page. But I'll tell you what she did, and this was very true for most black families coming out of the enslavement period.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:50.86)
This so-called illiterate woman made a decision that if it cost her her life, every child in her care would be educated. You understand? She herself had been denied the alphabet by the violence of slavery.

Adesoji Iginla (16:05.034)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:15.095)
But she turned around and she expended every ounce of her authority, making sure that the violence that stopped her would not stop the children in her care. And we had a whole community that felt that way about education. And so they pushed us.

And so Howard had to get educated. And so did Susan. And so did Mary and so did I. We were not allowed to grow up without our letters. And it didn't matter how hard we worked, it didn't matter how long it took. My Aunt Caroline was determined we would be educated. And you know, our teachers felt the same way.

Attended a school called the Gaines Colored High School. We had the finest teachers. Men and women educated so well but could not get employment in any other capacity. And they brought all their education to bear, and they would not tolerate anything but the best from us. Now there were times when I could not make it to school. Times when work

had to come before education because we still had to feed. But we had to still go and make up that time. So I graduated from high school, but not until I was 20 years old.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:57.42)
I learned how to sew. In time I became a decent seamstress, not as good as Aunt Carlin, but I could hold my own, a good dressmaker, taking in piecework, helping to keep food on our table.

At some point, I had the great fortune of meeting a gentleman who would change my fortunes. How does someone like me go from orphan barely a couple of years from slavery to becoming the first, as you call us now, African American woman to earn a dentistry degree?

I will tell you, I met a man named Jonathan Tao.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:56.171)
And Jonathan Taft was a man who had a lot of influence.

I was still in high school, picking up jobs wherever I could. And I began working part-time as an assistant in a dental office on 7th Street in Cincinnati. That office belonged to a man named Jonathan Taft.

He and his relative William Taut worked side by side.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:36.202)
Now, people want to romanticize this time. Don't believe everything you read. I was simply looking for a job, needing the money, and dental offices, unlike so many other professional spaces, would occasionally hire a capable young woman. Now I'm sure

Having a white father and being of a lighter persuasion did not hurt.

Adesoji Iginla (20:08.861)
He played a role.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:14.487)
But it was also my work ethic.

And in that job, I would sterilize instruments, keep records, greet the patients, and generally help make the practice run. It was a wonderful time, a place to absorb so much that could not even be taught in a school setting. And I'll tell you what, Jonathan Taft, he was no ordinary employer.

No.

And I understood that fairly quickly. And I took advantage to learn as much as I could. You see, Jonathan Taft had been the dean of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery. He had even helped found the American Dental Association and at one point served as its president.

Then he edited the dental register, one of the profession's most respected journals. Why would I spend so much time sharing his credentials? Be patient. I'm getting to it.

Adesoji Iginla (21:25.288)
I am.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:41.953)
By but by any measure, Mr. Taft, Dr. Taft, was one of the most consequential men in American dentistry of that century.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:59.318)
And would you believe that unlike most men of his elk, he believed publicly and he stated repeatedly that women belonged in dentistry?

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:22.123)
And not just women, but apparently even a colored one.

As you can imagine, this was not a common belief in the 1880s. My goodness, it's not a common belief in 2026 now, is it?

Adesoji Iginla (22:32.021)
That's all.

Adesoji Iginla (22:43.221)
Don't think so.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:45.079)
Dentistry, like any of the professional fields, law, medicine, architecture, engineering, have been guarded jealously, first by white men, but then by men in general, who assumed that there is something in the constitution of a woman that makes her ill-equipped to handle subjects that require logic.

And a certain temperament.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:20.811)
And yet we bring you all into the world and raise you. Isn't that laughable?

Adesoji Iginla (23:24.267)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:29.559)
Well, Taft thought that was nonsense. And he said so. But more importantly, and this is my test for those so-called allies, he acted on what he said he believed.

And when the University of Michigan recruited him to help organize and become the first dean of their new dental college, he went and he took with him his conviction about women.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:11.775)
And he worked to get women admitted to that program at a time when scarcely any dental colleges would even consider it in this country. Now that's an ally for you.

Not the kind who top-tail and fold like wet newspaper. As soon as a clearly racist individual

Adesoji Iginla (24:39.051)
Two pressure.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:48.361)
To shut their doors.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:54.007)
plural plurality of people in this country.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:59.999)
let me get back to my story. I worked in Miss in Dr. Taft's Cincinnati office for roughly three years. Young people, you must consider apprenticeships. I tell you, there's no better learning than hands-on learning.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:27.601)
No textbook alone could have taught me how instruments were prepared, how a practice was run, how a dentist spoke to a frightened patient, what the actual texture and rhythm and flow of a successful practice should look like beneath the theory of it.

Adesoji Iginla (25:51.371)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:55.212)
By the time I finally graduated from high school, albeit later than many, I did not need to be talked into applying to dental school.

But I did need to pass the entrance examination. But thanks to all I absorbed in those three years, I could and I did. And guess what? Dr. Taft encouraged me directly. He actually helped prepare me for that exam.

Let me pause there, said

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:35.639)
Do you remember the credentials of the man that I shared?

Now for those of you who have attained such lofty places in life.

Who are you bringing along?

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:53.197)
Who are you encouraging? Who are you helping to prepare? What doors are you opening for others?

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:08.533)
And in the fall of 1887, the same year I graduated from Gaines Colored High School, I was admitted into and I entered the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. And I began classes on the 1st of October, 1887. My mind.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:37.709)
At this point, the Ku Klux Klan was raging.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:50.231)
Commit it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:54.638)
to intimidating and lynching and oppressing the very people that they claim weren't good enough to achieve anything. So why the fear? Why the concern? Why not leave us up to our own devices? Anyway.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:17.729)
When I say I entered the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, I don't want that to just slide by you. I don't want you to think of it in the way that some of you just entered into school in more modern times.

Adesoji Iginla (28:27.307)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (28:38.367)
Atencing it's

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:40.641)
You need to locate me in that time period.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:50.571)
There was no Brown B Board of Education, you understand, at this time.

Surely most schools still had nothing to do with colored people, black people, and African Americans, people of color, whatever iteration, Negroes, whatever iteration we've gone through.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:13.921)
You better believe that I had many classmates who wanted nothing to do with me.

There was no diversity office. There were no other black kids in the class with whom I could talk to and find some solace? no.

I was one of three women in my entire graduating class and I was the only Negra.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:48.585)
As far as we could tell, as far as still research is told, I was the first.

Negro woman to be admitted to a dentistry school.

It was a very lonely time.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:10.349)
To stay up on my studies, deal with not having resources financially, weather the racism, weather the sexism.

still know that I had no option but to to succeed.

There was no one to sit with at the noon hour who understood.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:39.735)
Who understood what it cost to be in those classes where every day I was first treated as a specimen of

In the hopes that maybe I could eventually be treated as a student.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:02.507)
When I graduated from that institution, I was the twenty-third woman in the entire history of that institution up to that point. And the first Negro, the first African American. Let me tell you about our studies, young people. We studied anatomy.

We studied chemistry of metals and amalgams. Because you know, back then a dentist needed to know how to make her own fillings by hand. We had to make the fillings that went into your tooth. I studied extraction technique on cadaver jaws and later on real patients.

Adesoji Iginla (31:44.394)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:55.746)
And let me tell you, you haven't seen fear in someone's eyes till they're sitting there wondering, what are you gonna do to me?

Because losing a tooth in 1888, that was not some brief, you know, anesthesia, you know, walk in the park. What you go through today, done in a twinkling of an eye. No, that was a lot more involved. I studied prosthetics, the carving and fitting of false teeth. And we would carve the false teeth from porcelain.

Adesoji Iginla (32:25.203)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:36.823)
From Balkanite. We weren't pulling the teeth of black people and putting them into the mouths of others, like a one time president of the United States did. That's a whole other history lesson for you to go chase down.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:53.963)
There were no implants in that way, no titanium. Every single procedure I learned, I learned in a room where my very presence was debated.

Debated by people who never had to justify their own presence.

But I graduated three years later in June of eighteen ninety.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:26.165)
I don't think I even understood how big that moment was. I knew I'd accomplished something great. I was an orphan, a child of someone who had been enslaved, raised by a woman who couldn't read, who now was a whole doctor. Yes, I understood that meant something, but not really.

Adesoji Iginla (33:33.225)
Or what he was, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:50.082)
But once the black newspapers got a hold of it, they would soon start writing my name. See, I was proof. I was proof that the thing everyone said black people and black women in particular could not do could in fact be done. Had in fact just been done by an orphan, seamstress foster daughter, no less.

From George Street in Cincinnati. George Street in the Red Light District. Did they tell you yet what that red light district is?

Adesoji Iginla (34:30.387)
Still waiting.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:32.493)
come on now, people

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:39.175)
well, my career began.

I returned to Cincinnati that summer of 1890, and I opened my own private practice. Many times we had to open our own practices because establishments wouldn't hire us, you see. But this was a good thing. Maybe more of us should go back to owning our own businesses and practices.

There's something to be said for it.

My office sat at 261 West 9th Street. Now some records have the numbers flipped. They say 216 9th Street. Ooh, what does it matter? I had my own office.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:39.112)
And

Cannot begin to tell you what it meant to hang up my shingle as a doctor of dental surgery. I mean, think about it. How many of you today even have a black doctor? An African American doctor, if you wanted one, could access one in your community today. And this was 1890.

Adesoji Iginla (36:01.778)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:12.683)
But now I had to convince a rather skeptical public, sometimes an openly hostile public, to sit in my chair and let me put my hands in their mouths.

Adesoji Iginla (36:29.512)
Upon why.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:33.421)
See, I'm not gonna go into that history today, but there's a whole history of how black midwives were pushed out of delivering babies by white male doctors.

And one of the major campaigns they ran, racist cartoons drawn, where big black mammy type women

With big, gruppy, dirty hands.

And how unsanitary we were.

So I share that again for you to understand the times.

Adesoji Iginla (37:18.867)
The starting.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:28.087)
But as I look back, do you know that in a city that segregated its schools, its churches, its streetcars in practice, if not always by law,

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:46.387)
in a city that segregated its cemeteries.

People crossed the streets of all colors, race, and hue to come sit in my chair and have me work on their teeth because word had gotten around that I was good at what I did.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:21.367)
But there is a newspaper quotes that followed me for most of my career, and I'll share it here. Share it here is a lesson. Women, there's just some things that we deal with. And for those of you ever covering a woman, just something you might also want to consider.

I quote what they said. Gonna have to read it to you here. They said, talking about me. Her blushing, winning ways made a patient feel like finding an extra tooth for her to pull out.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:03.371)
My blushing winning ways. You know, why don't you smile?

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:14.519)
I understand. I appreciate, I suppose, what they meant as a compliment.

But even in praising a professional black woman, we still have to bring in her looks and we still have to bring in her charm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:37.333)
As though her competence is not enough.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:43.339)
I was great as a dentist, but apparently I was also required to be charming and delightful about it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:58.9)
Yeah.

African American first African American woman. First African American woman in a professional role.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:15.094)
Well

As you can imagine, I was sought after and I did get married.

Practicing on that ninth street, I was able to pay my rent, take care of myself, and also, of course, also help take care of my Aunt Caroline. And it was during those years in one of those polite social scenes set up for the black professionals, there weren't too many of us, that I met James Sanford Nelson.

what a dashing young man he was. James was not from Cincinnati originally. He was born in Canada in 1860.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:07.509)
And he had come to the United States as a boy, becoming a naturalized citizen in the 1880s. And by the time IPaths crossed, he'd already served in the Spanish-American War and held a position as a captain and a quartermaster in the Illinois National Guard's 8th Regiment out of Chicago.

He worked as an accountant and in eighteen ninety seven.

He earned a law degree from the Chicago College of Law.

There's no doubt he was an ambitious and a highly accomplished young man in his own right. We certainly made an it couple, as you all will say today. So I suppose long before you had Cliff and Claire Hoxtable, you had Ida and James.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:14.667)
We married on a Thursday morning in March of eighteen ninety five at my home on West Ninth Street. It was a quiet affair. We had a light breakfast after the ceremony, nothing extravagant. And as was the custom of that era,

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:36.007)
And what was expected of a married woman, I left my established practice in Cincinnati and my home city, and I closed my practice down, and I moved with my husband to his home to Chicago, and I started all over. Whew! Now Chicago was about three times the size of Cincinnati, a lot more diverse as well, and I was an unknown.

But I went to work. I will not lie to you, that move cost me professionally initially. I had spent five years building a reputation in Cincinnati. I had patients who trusted me. Word of mouth brought business to me. I had a reputation I had earned dollar by dollar, tooth by tooth, you understand. I gave it all up for my man in marriage.

We went to a place where nobody knew my name. And I bravely opened up a new practice, this time on Armor Avenue and 35th Street. It was a black neighborhood in Chicago. And I became the first African-American woman to practice dentistry in that city. Another first layered on top of my first.

Because Chicago had never had a black woman dentist at all before I arrived, credentialed or otherwise. But you know what? Tooth by tooth, person by person, I again built my reputation. And men and women of all ages and races sat in my chair. And I was particularly fond of the children.

Adesoji Iginla (44:05.707)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:29.589)
I never had any children of my own. James and I were married thirty-one years.

And I would not go into why we didn't have any children. I didn't talk about it then. Certainly not going to talk about it now. But there was something genuinely satisfying about being able to earn the trust of a frightened child as they sat in that chair. All the years I practiced, that was one of the most satisfying parts of my practice. Being able to earn the trust of a child.

In fact, one of my young

Adesoji Iginla (45:11.627)
Clients.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:12.825)
patients was Olive Henderson. Olive Henderson. And she asked me so many questions. She was so intrigued. And she would eventually go on to pursue dentistry herself. And she became the second African-American woman to practice dentistry in Chicago. That was important to me.

Because again, you should not be just a be about, I was the first and the only. Even if you happen to be the first, it should be that you're opening doors for others. And I hope I had some small, in some small measure, did something to prop open the door for Olive, Dr. Henderson, and many others. My practice moved many times, you know, nature of business.

And sometimes I practice in my own home on South State Street. And at one point I won't move to Wabash Avenue.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:18.997)
And Chicago gave me something that Cincinnati could not give me, in addition to practicing and having this flourishing practice. It also gave me a public life beyond the dental chair. I was active in the black women's clubs, the professional women's club of Chicago. I was the vice president at one point, and then eventually the president. I was very active in the Phyllis Wheatley Club.

Which at that time maintained the only shelter for black women. So imagine the times again. There were black people fleeing the South, sometimes fleeing abusive marriages. And they would come to Chicago and have nowhere to stay. Now there were places for white women. And the Phyllis Whitley Club was the only club that provided for black women, the only shelter. It meant a lot.

And what we provided was the difference between safety and sometimes death for our fellow sisters. I gave my time and my money to that work because I understood better than most what it meant to be given an opportunity.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:40.139)
Between my time in Cincinnati and my time in Chicago, I practiced dentistry for almost forty years.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:49.87)
Filling teeth, extracting teeth, fitting dentures, calming frightened patience, training my hands and my judgments, training young people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:05.773)
And eventually I wasn't just that black female dentist. I was Dr. Nelson. Dr. Nelson who knew what she was doing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:18.379)
Well, James passed away on the eleventh of march nineteen twenty six. Thirty-one years we'd built a life together and my goodness, the way the grief hit me.

Built a life with this man, you see.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:41.047)
But I say this to those of you who might experience grief as well.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:48.129)
Grief does not mean you must live in it forever.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:53.387)
And I did not remain alone for the rest of my life. Three years after James's death in 1929, I married again. This time I married William A. Rollins. Williams had a different profession from that of my first husband, James. He worked variously as a porter, a railroad porter. He worked as a waiter, later as a plasterer.

Adesoji Iginla (49:13.525)
James.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:23.053)
I share this because there's a message in this too, young women, older women. A good man is a good man. Regardless of his profession, you see.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:35.851)
And we built a different kind of life together.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:44.713)
in my sixties, something I do not apologize for.

And we made a life together for fifteen years until his death.

Now, I want to tell you about a part of my life. You know, there are no documentaries about me, but there is a documentary about this place I'm about to mention to you that is worth watching. Because it tells a story about the lives of people like me at that time. It's about Idlewild, Michigan. It was one of the great and yet ordinary joys of my life. See, I would, after my retirement,

Spend my summers in Idawide and then come back and spend the rest of my time in Chicago. Idawide was a resort community founded in the woods and lakes of Lake County, Michigan in 1912. It was originally built by Whiteland developers, but over the decades it became one of the premier vacation destinations in the entire country.

for black, middle and professional class families.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:00.401)
you know, we couldn't just drive to any beach or any resort. And Idaway became a haven for us, a place where doctors and lawyers and dentists and teachers and their families we could swim, we could dance, we could have a good time, and simply exist for a few weeks a year without that constant hum of surveillance, of exclusion, of judgment.

And all the entertainment we had. Every entertainer of any renown would come out and perform for the summer crowds there. I kept a summer home there. And after James died, and through my years with William, I retreated to Idlewide every summer.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:52.331)
It was a respite. I didn't have to prove myself any more there. Hm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:02.207)
And having that space mattered to me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:11.969)
Now Williams died June of 1944 from injuries from a car accident. It was a hit and run.

I did not marry a third time. I remained a widow for the last nine years of my life. I lived on till the age of eighty-six. I died on the third of May 1953. I am buried in Lincoln Cemetery on the south side of Chicago. Same south side where the first black president.

Of the United States of America now has his presidential building. There's a historic cemetery there that over the decades has been the resting place of many notable black Chicagoans. My gravestone carries the title simply Doctor. Not Mrs. Nelson, not Mrs. Rollins, though I was very proud of being all of those women.

The doctor first.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:25.387)
Because it was the hardest worn award attached to my name. And I wanted that carved in stone.

Adesoji Iginla (53:28.843)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:37.611)
What else can I say?

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:45.397)
I will share this last piece and then take any questions that you may have.

The earliest substantial mention of me came within a few years of my graduation, besides in the papers. it was in 1893, and a black physician named

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:13.345)
Dr. Monroe, Dr. Monroe Majors. He published a book titled Noted Negro Women, Their Triumphs and Activities. And I was included in it. That was in 1893. And then in 1900, Brooker T. Washington included my portrait and my story in his book.

A new Negro for a New Century, a survey of black achievement at the turn of that new century. Arguably to use to argue that we should be given more opportunities to overcome the racism of the time.

Adesoji Iginla (54:53.45)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:56.023)
Decad decades later, in 1964, Sylvia Dannett included me in her book, Profiles of Negro Womanhood. And then there was another book in 1979, I think, Profiles of the Negro in Af in A in American dentistry.

And there have been many others. One about the history of shentistry, I think, black dentist in Chicago. You can look these up. And then, of course, this one by Jesse Carney Smith, Notable Black American Woman. It's a rather thick volume, but I'm also in this one as well. So just a a little bit about a life of a woman who came from.

Adesoji Iginla (55:33.503)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:48.43)
to say the least, very humble means. But given an opportunity, took it and made something of my life. And then opened doors for others as well.

Adesoji Iginla (56:02.763)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:11.009)
Don't know if you have any questions for me. Has has anyone yet told you what that red light district is?

Adesoji Iginla (56:13.279)
Yeah, I just

Adesoji Iginla (56:16.992)
Yeah, apparently it's

Well late ladies of the night. I don't know what ladies of the night means. Duke joints and drinking houses can be found.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:35.467)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (56:38.411)
Okay, interesting.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:39.373)
Prostitution and yes, things that you don't necessarily want your children around. But that was where my aunt could afford to get a place.

Adesoji Iginla (56:42.301)
Adesoji Iginla (56:51.785)
The oldest profession in the world, okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:54.525)
Nonetheless, we made it out of there because of her discipline and her focus. Again, a lesson for us all.

Adesoji Iginla (57:02.303)
Hmm. So, quick question. you made mention of the fact that we live in interesting times and I want to use Idlewild, Michigan as a point of reference. You said that place thrived because segregation created a captive market for black leisure. Would you think in this present 2026 we need more of Idlehyde?

Adesoji Iginla (57:36.459)
And not just in leisure, but in general.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:40.183)
I think I think we need places where we're safe.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:47.391)
We need places where we don't have to explain who we are to anyone. We need places where we can celebrate ourselves.

We need places where we can build community and remind ourselves of the ties that bind. So, yes. And those spaces don't have to be created out of others rejecting us. They should be created because we are choosing intentionally to come together.

Adesoji Iginla (58:21.263)
Okay, yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you. not sure if there's any other questions in the chat. I would look to go there if there is, but that said, it's interesting that you made mention that someone opened a pathway for you. You also created one for Miss Henderson, Dr. Henderson. Would you advise?

people in the chat or whoever's listening to this soon after to pick somebody under their wing. I think they call it mentoring now. Pick somebody under their wing and ensure they are shown the ropes, as it were.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:10.367)
It's the only way we get ahead. No no one figures it out all on their own. And I I I actually believe it's a duty, it's a responsibility that we have to one another. Someone showed you the ropes, you should do the same for the next generation. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (59:34.859)
I think you have a question. If I could go back in time and ask the gray one question, I want to know whether she felt pressure to represent the entire race and agenda, or do she feel do you feel let's see, do you feel she was focused on the work?

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:54.796)
My focus was always on excellence. And if I was the best version of myself that I could be, then everything else falls into place. Because I can't be anything other than myself, right? And if I

Pushing myself, if I'm practicing my skills to become the very best dentist that I'm capable of being, then it just becomes an asset to women to.

Black people, even though that was not my driving, you know, what was driving me. So the drive that the the motivating factor is just to be excellent. And everything else falls into place. Because otherwise, you know, represent my entire race, that's not even a possibility. When I applied to go to dentistry school, I had no idea that I would.

Be graduating as the first dent female, black female dentist. That's not, that was not the motivating factor. But I had been exposed to a profession. I'd had an opportunity to learn from one of the best. I knew that I could do this work. And when I went in, I wanted to learn and to come back and serve my community and provide a different kind of life for my aunt and and for myself.

And so the focus I think for everyone should be perform to the best of your capability and then everything else falls into place. Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:47.999)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think with that answer and motivating words, we have come to the end of this week's episode of Women in Resistance. any final thoughts?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:06.711)
Just gratitude. Thank you so much for having me. And please go out and motivate the young people. No matter their circumstances, how your story starts does not have to be how it ends.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:22.251)
Okay. So with that said, we've come to the end of this week's episode of Women in Resistance. Next week it will be the turn of Sylvia de Villard. So, who she is, her story, she'll all find out next week. Again, the story is that of Sylvia de Villad, but this week it's been that of Dr. Ida Gray. And you've heard how she became.

the doctors, the hands that heal. So go out, be inspired, help somebody achieve their dream and in cost, you know, uplift the community as it were. So that said, good night and God bless.