When Dr. Edward Alexander Welters left Jacksonville, Florida, in 1930 together with his spouse, Lottie, and their household, he introduced greater than dental instruments and ambition. He introduced with him the components for one of many earliest Black-owned antiseptic tooth powders in america and a burning want to see African People handled with dignity, whether or not within the dentist’s chair, {the marketplace}, or the voting sales space.
Dr. Welters, born in Key West in 1887, was a graduate of Meharry Dental School, the main establishment for Negro dentists on the time. After establishing his observe in St. Augustine, he quickly moved to Jacksonville, the place he opened a contemporary dental workplace within the Masonic Temple on Broad Avenue. He was a proud member of Pythagoras Lodge No. 25 below the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida, Prince Corridor Affiliated, which was headquartered at 410 Broad Avenue, the very coronary heart of Black enterprise within the LaVilla district.
However Dr. Welters wasn’t content material to repair tooth one mouth at a time. He manufactured and bought “Dr. Welters’ Antiseptic Tooth Powder” from his Jacksonville workplace and boldly marketed it within the pages of The Disaster, the journal revealed by the NAACP below the editorship of W.E.B. Du Bois. One memorable advert described it as “Completely free from grit or acid, Your gold tooth polished, your white tooth bleached,” and invited brokers nationwide to assist distribute it. The product rapidly turned an emblem of Black self-sufficiency and well being consciousness. Its labeling proudly declared that it was made by the “Largest and Solely Tooth Powder Manufacturing Company Owned and Managed by Negroes in america.”
Along with crafting the product, Welters constructed a outstanding promotional car: a Graham Brothers supply truck usual within the form of his tooth powder can. Painted with slogans like “Prevents Decay” and “Dr. E.A. Welters Tooth Powder,” the car doubled as a rolling commercial, geared up with a public-address system that performed gospel music and well being bulletins because it rolled by way of Black communities.
However as enterprise expanded, bother adopted. Upon transferring to Chicago and organising operations within the Bronzeville district, Dr. Welters bumped into issues with federal officers. Within the early Thirties, the Meals and Drug Administration seized a number of shipments of his product, claiming the time period “antiseptic” was deceptive. The federal government’s place was based mostly on new meals and drug laws, however many within the Black neighborhood seen the repeated seizures as racially motivated harassment, an try and silence and dismantle a profitable Negro-owned enterprise.
Slightly than fold, Dr. Welters fought again with the identical tenacity that had constructed his model. In 1936, he filed swimsuit in opposition to the College of Chicago Hospitals for refusing to deal with him on account of his race. The incident made the entrance web page of The Chicago Defender below the headline “Jim Crow at Clinics of U. of Chicago,” rallying public help and elevating questions on medical apartheid in one in all America’s most progressive cities.
His activism didn’t cease within the courtroom. In 1945, Dr. Welters was elected to the Illinois Home of Representatives, changing into one of many few Black males within the state legislature on the time. Throughout his time period, he launched and handed the Hospital Licensing Act, a bit of laws that denied tax exemptions to hospitals that practiced racial discrimination. He additionally helped push by way of insurance policies that prohibited segregated medical and dental colleges from receiving state licensing or funding.
All through his life, Dr. Welters remained a dedicated supporter of schooling. He was a donor and advocate for Florida A&M College and labored to determine scholarship paths for aspiring Black dentists and medical college students. In 1962, Florida A&M acknowledged him for his contributions to well being fairness and better studying.
In his ultimate years, Dr. Welters operated a free dental clinic from his transformed mansion-factory-office on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, offering companies to the underserved and unemployed. When he handed away in 1964, he was honored by Meharry Medical School for 50 years of service and remembered within the Defender as a “man who introduced dignity to the dental chair and justice to the statehouse.”
At this time, his papers are preserved within the Chicago Historical past Museum, and the Masonic Temple that after housed his first workplace nonetheless stands in Jacksonville, testomony to a person whose smile-changing powder carried with it a message far stronger than fluoride: that Black women and men have been able to constructing their very own establishments, therapeutic their very own folks, and shaping their very own destinies.
*Jerry Urso is the Grand Historian for The Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida. A local of Massachusetts, he holds a grasp’s diploma in historical past from Trinity School and comes from a protracted line of Masons. He earned a Fellowship to the Phylaxis Society, a corporation that was created by Prince Corridor Masons and is partial towards dispersing gentle about Prince Corridor and the community of masons that derive from The African Lodge of Boston, Massachusetts going again to 1775.
He’s the Previous President of the Alexander Darnes Analysis Chapter, Previous President of Lux e Tenebris Analysis Society, and a member of the Jacksonville Historic Society and Florida Historic Society. He was a panelist for the Civil Rights Timeline for the Metropolis of Jacksonville and Lavilla Historian for the Downtown Funding Authority. He was awarded the Joseph A Walkes award for his work on Prince Corridor Masons and the Civil Rights Motion. He’s a Historian for the Actual Rosewood Basis and the July Perry Basis. He’s additionally a member of the Chi Rho Fraternity.