Louis T. Wright

Louis Tompkins Wright (1891–1952) was an American surgeon noted for his work in Harlem. The Spingarn Medallist played a major role in investigating the use of Aureomycin as a treatment on humans. Wright, a native of LaGrange, Georgia, received his bachelor's degree from Clark Atlanta University in 1911 before getting his medical degree from Harvard in 1915. His efforts related to Civil Rights began in college when he missed three weeks of school to join picket lines protesting The Birth of a Nation. He went on to graduate fourth in his class and was a Captain in the Army Medical Corps in France in World War I. During the war he introduced intradermal vaccination for smallpox, was gassed and won the Purple Heart. On returning to the...