Vada Somerville

Dr. Vada Watson Somerville was born on November 1, 1885 in Pomona, California. She married John Somerville in 1912, who was a Doctor of Dental Surgery. John Somerville studied at the USC School of Dentistry hoping to train himself as a dentist and return to Jamaica where he was born. Vada met John while she was an undergraduate student. Instead of returning to Jamaica as he once planned, John ended up devoting his life to advancing the Black community in the greater Los Angeles area. Together, John and Vada founded the NAACP Los Angeles center in 1914 and built the Dunbar Hotel which was initially known as the Hotel Somerville, providing a non-segregated hotel for traveling African Americans to stay in. Vada died on October 28, 1972 in her home of Los Angeles, California.

In 1903, Vada received a scholarship through the Los Angeles Times newspaper which allowed her to attend the University of Southern California (USC). After Vada met her husband John, she pursued a career in dentistry, and in 1918 became the first black woman in California to receive her D.D.S. or Doctor of Dental Surgery. Vada was the only woman and the only African American in her class. Impressively, Vada scored among the highest in the state dental examination. Vada’s husband John was the first African American person to graduate from USC dentistry, and Vada became the second African American women to graduate from USC dentistry.

Vada originally worked as a book keeper and a telephone operator after finishing college and was still involved in these jobs when she met her husband, John. Because there was a high chance that her husband, John Somerville would be drafted into military service, Vada decided to study dentistry at USC so that she could continue to treat his patients in the case that he was called up. She became the University of Southern California's second black graduate in 1918 after graduating from the dental school. She is the first black woman to be licensed in dentistry in California and continued to practice with her husband. After retiring from dentistry in 1933, when she was 48 years old, she found her calling in civil rights activism and began to participate in many community organizations. She made the decision to devote herself full-time to “social welfare and civic work.", some of which are the Los Angeles League of Women Voters, the Council on Public Affairs, UCLA’s YWCA and the USC Half Century Club. In 1927, Vada and John broke ground for the Hotel Somerville in Los Angeles—described in Black Women in America as “an elegant, all-Black hostelry that symbolized both the possibilities of racial advancement and the realities of racial segregation.” This hotel became a gathering place for those African Americans who wanted social change as well as an example of how the educated black class was beginning to contribute new status and ideas into the discussion of race in America. In 1928, the Hotel Somerville served as the headquarters for the NAACP national convention. After the stock market crashed and the hotel was bought from the Somervilles, the Hotel Somerville was renamed the Dunbar Hotel and soon after it became a museum with local and national landmark status.

Through Vada's civil rights activism, Vada dedicated much of her life to the bettering of fellow black women’s lives. By 1938, Vada had become an active member in the establishment of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Council of Negro Women—an organization founded only three years before by Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1948, Vada helped to co-found the Los Angeles County Human Relations Committee and established the Pilgrim House Community Center designed to take care of the health needs of black families who migrated to LA during World War II. Vada’s support of black women was crucial to the creation of black women’s service organizations such as the Links and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. One of her final female accomplishments was her creation of The Stevens House, a multiracial dormitory at UCLA made to foster better interracial relations between students.

She lived to see the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which paved the way for more advancement in civil rights.

Both John and Vada Somerville are revered at the USC Dental School, where their portraits are hanging as symbols of ambition and perseverance. Additionally, USC’s African-American residential theme floor has been named Somerville Place, after John and Vada Somerville. It has gained national recognition by being featured in the Los Angeles newspaper in 2000. The goal of Somerville Place is to foster a respect for black culture and create a sense of community on campus. However, Vada’s legacy extended beyond her accomplishments at USC. The civil rights movement, including the Brown v. Board of Education decision and Rosa Park’s legacy, became a reality in large part due to the efforts of Vada Somerville and other women like her across the country. By the time Vada died, she had turned her own personal accomplishment into a social revolution for women across the country.