N.C. A&T Alumni Times

Dr. Samuel B. Jones and Dr. Simon Powell Sebastian were two of North Carolina A&T State University’s earliest college physicians, with much more in common than their titles. Both men emigrated from the British West Indies around the turn of the 20th Century, making them some of our earliest foreign-born faculty. Jones initially came to N.C. A&T as a professor of mathematics and Sebastian as a professor of multiple subjects, yet both men would step into the role of college physician. They also married American wives, both of whom also have a unique legacy with the city of Greensboro.

Jones (1874 – 1949), a native of St. Kitts, British West Indies, was educated in Antigua, Scotland, and Illinois earning him the title, "The Man with a String of Degrees." After teaching mathematics for one year, he became the head of the academic department and the college physician in 1910. Jones held these positions until the start of World War I when he was called back to St. Kitts to serve with the British West Indian forces. His medical services were still needed in St. Kitts after the war and he did not return to the United States. While he was still in Greensboro, he married Vivian Jones, the daughter of President James B. Dudley. The couple would remain in the West Indies for the remainder of their lives. Jones greatly improved the health care and the medical research for many people and is still honored and well-remembered in the history of Carribean STEM.

In 1902, Sebastian (1877 – 1937) began working with The Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race (now N.C. A&T State University) where he was the assistant to President Dudley and a professor of English, foreign languages, mathematics and geography. After obtaining a medical degree from the Leonard Medical School at Shaw University he returned to N.C. A&T to serve as college physician, filling in the role left by Jones after the war. With two other doctors, he opened the Trinity Hospital for Negroes in 1918 on East Market Street. Along with others, Sebastian formed the historic L. Richardson Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, N.C. His wife, Martha J. O. Sebastian was the first African American public librarian in Greensboro, appointed to the newly opened Carnegie Negro Library in 1924. They were married from 1915 until his death from a car accident in 1937. The Sebastian Health Center was named in his honor and served generations of Aggie students from 1953 until the 2010s. In 2007, Sebastian’s Greensboro home was opened to become the Sebastian Medical Museum.