Charles Edwin Bentley (1859–1929) was an American dentist. In Chicago, he was the founder of what grew to be the largest local dental society in the world in the early 20th century. As an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

civil rights activist, he was a founder of the

Niagara Movement The Niagara Movement (NM) was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. ...

and leader in the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

branch of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...

(NAACP).

Biography

Bentley was born and educated in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...

. In 1887 he earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Chicago College of Dental Surgery. In his office was organized, in 1888, the Odontographic Society, and he was its first president. This dental organization grew to be the largest local dental society in the world. In February 1903 the Odontographic Society gave its famous clinic with three thousand members of the profession and nearly one thousand dental students in attendance. The Odontographical Society was merged into the Chicago Dental Society in 1911, and Bentley was a part of the merger committee. At the suggestion of Dr. Bentley, the Odontographic Society instituted an investigation into the condition of the mouths and teeth of the children of the schools. One year later Dr. Bentley submitted this report, and the same was published in the Dental Review of 1900. This report was the basis of future work along this line. Bentley published extensively. Two of his most important papers were "The Application of Comparative Anatomy to Dentistry” and “Contact Points of the Medical and Dental Profession". Bentley was chairman of the Child Welfare Exhibit on Dentistry. He long served as the secretary of Provident Hospital. He was the first president of the Equal Opportunity League of Chicago. He was a charter member of the

, and of the directory of the NAACP. In 1898, Bentley married Florence Lewis, who was for some years the literary editor of the

Philadelphia Press ''The Philadelphia Press'' (or ''The Press'') is a defunct newspaper that was published from August 1, 1857, to October 1, 1920. The paper was founded by John Weiss Forney. Charles Emory Smith was editor and owned a stake in the paper from 1880 u ...

Biography

References

Further reading