A Tide That Reshaped Our Shores: A Tribute to Dr. Jeanne Craig Sinkford

Sonya Smith, J.D., Ed.D., M.Ed., M.A., ADEA Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff, recently wrote a tribute to honor the legacy of the late Jeanne C. Sinkford, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., FACD, FICD. Dr. Sinkford was the ADEA Senior Scholar-in-Residence Emerita and Professor Emerita and Dean Emerita at Howard University College of Dentistry.

Jeanne C. Sinkford, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., FACD, FICD

Below is an excerpt from the full article in the Journal of Dental Education (JDE), “A Tide That Reshaped Our Shores: A Tribute to Dr. Jeanne Craig Sinkford.”

In his 1966 “Day of Affirmation” speech, Robert F. Kennedy, a prominent American politician and former US Attorney General, reminded a generation that “each time a person stands up for an ideal… [they] send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Few lives embody this truth more than the life of Dr. Sinkford. From the time she enrolled as a student at Howard University to her historic appointment as the first woman dean of a U.S. dental school, she led with boldness and a drive that pierced many of the social and professional boundaries that still divide us today. Across decades of mentorship, teaching, scholarship, and strategic leadership at the American Dental Education Association (ADEA), Dr. Sinkford stood up—again and again—for the ideals of a profession. These ideals were rooted in her unwavering conviction that talent, character, hard work, and possibility should never be constrained by the circumstances of one's birth.

The ripples that Dr. Sinkford sent forth in the health professions have long since become a current. The mighty force of her tides reshaped the shores of oral health education, the academic health professions, dentistry, and health care in ways we still measure. As I think about leaders and scholars who have transformed a profession, there are those whose contributions are assessed by the number of publications, highest positions held, or total awards received. In contrast, there are those rare few of a far more extraordinary kind, such as Dr. Sinkford, whose impact is measured not only in the lives they lived but also by those they molded. To write a tribute to her in the pages of the Journal—where our ideas often converged—is both a profound honor and the most tender of griefs.

I will say that academia and the health professions must not be too formal to state plainly, “In Dr. Sinkford, we have lost one of our most luminous minds, advocates, and dauntless leaders.”

Read more in the full JDE article.