Dr. Clifton Orrin Dummett was born May 20, 1919, in Georgetown, Guyana; married Lois Maxine Doyle. He went to College at Roosevelt University in 1941 where he graduated with BS degree, and later obtaining DDS and MSD from Northwestern University in 1942. While at University of Michigan as a Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellow he obtained MPH degree in Public Health.

Dr. Clifton O. Dummett is a specialist in periodontics and oral health, an outstanding clinician, a superior investigator, a superb teacher, and an able administrator. He was professor and chairman of the department of periodontics oral diagnosis, chairman dental and administrator of Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry, Tennessee, from 1942-1947 and Dean from 1947-1949. From 1946-1965 he was Chief Dental Service VA Hospital in Alabama and VA Research Hospital Chicago from 1965-1966. Director Health Center--Watts Health Center, from 1966-1968. Professor and chairman department of community dentistry, also associate dean external affairs University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 1968.

According to scholars in this field, it is impossible to conduct a study of this topic — periodontics and oral health, without the works of Clifton Orrin Dummett. Dr. Dummett is still an active writer on this topic, an amazing fact considering he has been writing about the role of African Americans in dentistry for over fifty years now. In the 1949 biography, they announce that he has resigned his post as Dean of the Department of Dentistry at Meharry. At the time he accepted that post, he was the youngest Dean ever of a school of Dentistry. Following this period in his life, Dr. Dummett went on to receive several honors, not the least of which was his term as President of the International Association of Dental Research, the first black person to hold this honor.

Dr. Clifton Orrin Dummett, eminent scholar, historian, teacher and author is credited for preserving the history of African Americans in dentistry.