HBCU Howard Medical Club of New York Formal Banquet Photo with Dean Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams, Harlem YWCA, 1939

HBCU Howard Medical Club of New York

Photograph

Howard Medical Club of New York formal banquet photograph identifying dean Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams among various Black physicians, spouses, and guests at the Harlem YWCA on January 17, 1939. Adams served as dean of Howard University’s College of Medicine from 1929 until his death in 1940, and Howard identifies him as the first Black dean of the College of Medicine. His deanship raised admissions standards, strengthened the curriculum, recruited highly trained faculty, and expanded the production of African American physicians during a period when most American medical schools admitted few Black students. The banquet places Adams within Howard’s New York medical network one year before his death, surrounded by a formal professional community built around Black medical education, alumni affiliation, and institutional advancement.

Large framed silver gelatin photograph, 16" x 6.5", New York City, January 17, 1939. Men in tuxedos and dark suits and women in evening dresses sit and stand around a long banquet table set with cups, plates, glassware, salt and pepper shakers, floral decoration, and printed programs. A handwritten inscription at the right identifies the event as “Howard Medical Club of N.Y.C. Formal Banquet with Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams at Y.W.C.A. 179 W. 137th St. 1-17-39.” A second inscription within the lower left area reads “Photo R. Castillo 10 E. 116 St. N.Y.C.,” identifying the New York photographer. The 179 West 137th Street address corresponds to the Harlem YWCA, which operated from its purpose-built 137th Street and Lenox Avenue building beginning in 1921.

The Harlem YWCA served Black New Yorkers through residence, training, employment programs, lectures, and community gatherings during the interwar years, making it an apt setting for a Howard medical banquet tied to professional uplift and Black institutional life in Harlem. Adams’s appearance connects the New York gathering to Howard University’s medical school at the end of the 1930s, when Black physicians still relied heavily on historically Black institutions, professional clubs, and alumni networks for advancement in medicine. Light toning, surface wear, and scattered abrasions visible through the glass, housed in a black wooden frame with minor edge wear; overall in very good condition. The photograph preserves a named 1939 gathering of Black medical professionals around the first Black dean of Howard’s College of Medicine, with event, venue, photographer, and date all present on the print.

Item #23524

Price: $885.00