Louis Tompkins Wright, a pioneer in clinical antibiotic research, devoted his life to the racial integration of health care in order to provide full access of opportunity to Black patients, physicians, and nurses. He was born July 23, 1891 in LaGrange, Georgia. His father was born a slave, but pursued his education at Clark University in Atlanta, Ga. After completing college, he furthered his professional education at Meharry Medical School in Nashville, TN. He received a medical degree—as valedictorian of his class in 1881. He later gave up his medical practice to be a Methodist minister. Louis father died shortly after Louis's birth and his mother remarried in 1899, when Louis was eight. Also a physician, Louis's step-father, William Fletcher Penn, was the first African American to graduate from Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Penn established the Mercy Hospital in Atlanta and served as superintendent and chief of the surgical service for many years.
In 1925, Dr William Fletcher Penn assumed responsibility as chief of surgery at the Veterans Hospital in Tuskegee, Ala, a position he held until his death in 1934. He emerged as the leading physician in south Atlanta, caring for both White and Black patients. As a distinguished African American surgeon in the South he conducted surgical clinics to help his colleagues develop and advance their skills. Penn was the first African American in Atlanta to own an automobile, and he invited Louis to join him when he made house calls. The automobile was both a source of pride and a means to provide care to people throughout Atlanta. Louis recalls driving through the White section of town, Whites would call out names and throw stones. When the car needed repairs few would offer their assistance.
Louis’ stepfather influenced the young boy tremendously, embracing him as his own son. As a teenager, Louis witnessed the Atlanta riots of 1907. He was forced to defend himself and his family when his stepfather put a Winchester rifle in his hand, positioned him in the front of the house, and instructed Louis to shoot anyone who came through the front gate. A White neighbor, rescued the family by hiding them in another section of Atlanta to escape gunfire and the threat of being lynched. Following in the footsteps of his father, Louis enrolled at Clark University and in 1912 graduated as valedictorian, with distinction in chemistry. Leaving the sanctuary of Atlanta with encouragement from his stepfather, Louis went to Boston with the goal of securing admission to Harvard Medical School.
However, his experience in seeking admission to the institution was not free from controversy. Upon visiting the school for his interview, the interviewer—Channing Frothingham, MD—realized that the applicant was Black and had attended “Clark University in Atlanta, a school that offered elementary, high school, and university instruction to Blacks—not the Clark University in Worcester, MA.” After convincing Dr. Frothingham to have his abilities tested, Frothingham sent Wright to see Dr Otto Folin, professor of biological chemistry. After an oral examination, Folin called Dean Frothingham and told him Louis possessed sufficient knowledge of chemistry. Frothingham ultimately ruled that he had "adequate chemistry for admission to this school". Louis join the following fall class.
Louis’ years at Harvard Medical School were filled with good friendships with classmates, both White and Black, younger and older. He had great admiration for several of his professors, including Walter Cannon and Otto Folin. His easy ability to develop close personal relationships was balanced against overt discrimination from some of the faculty. For example, once Louis walked into anatomy class the first day to find a Black male cadaver hanging in the front of the room by a pair of ice tongs inserted in the ears. Balancing work with activism emerged as a theme that would remain dominant throughout Louis’ professional life. During his third year at Harvard, the movie "Birth of a Nation", a story about Reconstruction, opened in Boston. Louis immediately joined the picket lines outside the Tremont Theater protesting the movie, because it not only portrayed Blacks in subservient, imbecilic, and violent roles, it also glorified the Ku Klux Klan. After 3 weeks of demonstrations and negotiations, the group of influential Black professionals and businessmen shut down the Tremont Theater.
When he returned to medical school, worried about the impact of his absence, Louis ran into Dr Richard Cabot, one of his professors. To Louis’ amazement, Cabot admitted he was proud to know that Louis had picketed, because he also believed that the movie should be banned. He won the Hayden academic scholarship each year at Harvard. He graduated cum laude in 1915, fourth in his class. Working closely with Walter Cannon, Louis studied the effects of alcohol on gastric emptying and published a paper in the "Boston Medical and Surgical Journal" in 1916. In spite of graduating with honors from Harvard Medical School, he was NOT given an internship at any of the White hospitals. He met rejection from Harvard, Peter Bent Brigham, and Boston City Hospital. He was told by Dr. Harvey Cushing that under no circumstances would a Black intern be allowed to operate on or care for private patients in the surgical services of Boston’s elite hospitals.
After being rejected because of his color by the surgery program in Vancouver, Canada, and the pathology program at Boston City Hospital, Wright did his postgraduate internship at Freedmen's Hospital, an affiliate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. His father wrote to the governor of Maryland and other prominent citizens on behalf of his son. At Freedmen’s Hospital, Louis again distinguished himself by developing excellent surgical skills, conducting research on the Schick test for diphtheria, and refusing to abandon his vision of racial equality. Louis became interested in diphtheria during an outbreak of the disease and administered the Schick test to a number of his patients. He discovered that the reaction was visible and furthermore, that the rate of immunity in the Black population was similar to that among Whites. He published his results in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, gaining recognition as a clinician–scientist.
Wright stood firm when faced with discrimination as a surgical intern. He refused to march in the inaugural procession of President Woodrow Wilson, because Blacks were relegated to the back of the parade. His response to prominent hospital patients who called Louis derogatory names nearly resulted in his dismissal. He simply was too good a surgeon, however, to be disregarded or dismissed. In 1910 there were just 7 all-Black medical schools in existence. Freedmen’s Hospital was one of a handful of hospitals where African Americans could obtain postgraduate training, which in 1915 was limited to a 1-year rotating internship. After completing his internship, Louis joined his stepfather to help him financially, and, back in his hometown, he quickly built up a large clinical practice. He scored the highest marks in the state medical licensing examinations in Georgia and Maryland and scored in the top decile (93.4%) in New York State.
During Louis’ first year in practice, James Weldon Johnson, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), came to Atlanta to organize a local chapter. Walter White, then working for the Standard Life Insurance Company, was elected secretary; Louis became treasurer. Thus began a lifelong friendship between White and Wright and involvement for both in the NAACP. But Louis was not to remain in Atlanta long. He simply could not tolerate the overt discrimination against him, his family, and his colleagues that he encountered daily in the South. When the United States entered World War I by declaring war against Germany, on April 6th 1917, Wright enlisted in the Army. He passed the entrance examination with ease, securing the initial rank of first lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps. Wright reported to Camp Upton on Long Island, NY, where he met his future wife, Corinne M. Cooke. They were married one month before he left for France. One of their two daughters, Jane Cooke Wright would become world known for her work with cancer research.
In 1918, Wright sailed for France. He ran a field hospital in France, and was awarded the Purple Heart after a phosgene gas–based German assault on his battalion aid station, gassing 1200 men. His excellent surgical and medical skills earned him a promotion. After discharge from the hospital at Raon l’Etape, he was later placed in charge of a military hospital in France, for the 92nd Division (consisting of the 366th, 367th, and 368th regiments) and put in charge of all the surgical wards, becoming the youngest surgeon to be given such a position. There he worked side by side with White physicians and nurses. At the close of the war, with a Purple Heart and the rank of captain, Wright sailed home to New York City to a nation that still very much segregated. He found employment in the venereal disease clinic in the New York City Health Department. He immediately applied for staff privileges at Harlem Hospital. Familiar with Wright’s war record and his clinical research, Dr Cosmo O’Neal, superintendent of the hospital, offered him an entry-level position working in the women’s outpatient clinic. When Louis arrived on his first day, four physicians quit in protest, and O’Neal found himself transferred to the gate-booth at Bellevue Hospital to direct ambulance traffic.
Dr Louis T. Wright was a leader not only in the field of surgery but in the work of the NAACP. His early experience with overt discrimination flamed his passion for equity and justice in all aspects of life, but particularly in the area of professional education and medical care. His leadership of the NAACP pushed the organization to the forefront in the fight for racial integration of health care. In 1919, Wright became the first Black surgeon to be appointed to the Harlem Hospital in New York. He went on to become the director of surgery, and later president of the Harlem Medical Board. Dr. Wright’s implementations at Harlem Hospital were incredibly significant. Dr Wright protested the hospital’s dilapidated conditions, raised its patient care standards, improved staff professionalism, and brought the institution to national eminence. Wright's additions gained the attention of the nation, and his revisions were eventually implemented into many hospitals nationwide. His leadership of Harlem Hospital enabled the institution to serve as a model for the racial integration of professional staffs and teaching programs.
Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Louis Wright engaged in full-time private practice in Harlem while working closely with Dr John Fox Connors, a White man, who rose to the position of chief of the Department of Surgery at Harlem Hospital. Wright helped establish a nursing school at the hospital that admitted qualified Black students. The school opened in 1923 and became increasingly active throughout the 1920s. Wright sought to create a residency program in surgery and to open all postgraduate training programs in the hospital to qualified African American applicants. In 1929, he became the first African American surgeon hired by the New York City Police Department, having scored the second-highest mark in his group on the rigorous civil service examination. This career advancement was heralded throughout the Black community as a major accomplishment for Black professionals. Wright would rotate with New York’s leading surgeons, he would be responsible for the medical care of White policemen and the staff of the City Police Department, and he would be paid for this coveted honor.
As a member of the NAACP, he worked toward racial equality. Wright occasionally encountered opposition to his advocacy of more stringent educational standards. Especially upset were those members of the Black medical establishment who had grown used to separate and at times unequal, less rigorous schools. In 1934, Wright was elected chairman of the NAACP national board of directors. That same year he was elected a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, becoming the second African American member since the founding of the organization in 1913, the first being Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. Two years later, Wright addressed the 27th convention delegates with his first account of the association’s activities. He focused on the NAACP’s strategy to eliminate lynching by securing federal legislation that would make lynching a crime. Twenty-five lynchings had occurred that year alone. Wright discussed efforts to improve jobs and education for African Americans through litigation, highlighting suits filed by Thurgood Marshall and his team of lawyers to obtain access to higher education in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. He ended his summary with a discussion of the NAACP’s fight against discrimination in health care.
At the 28th NAACP annual convention, held in Detroit in 1937, Wright again attacked discrimination in health care. He declared that segregated institutions often provided second-rate training for African American doctors and second-rate treatment of patients. This was “not because of any inherent lack [of potential], but because it was the common experience that ‘equal but separate’ institutions are separate, but not equal.” That year the convention delegates agreed to a national program to end discrimination in health care. The NAACP pledged to undertake an active and sustained fight to make available the facilities of each hospital, medical school, and health agency through direct political action and aroused public opinion, so that identical opportunities in medical services would be furnished to all citizens. Dr. Wright rose the quality of residency training and medical care for Black professionals and patients. For this he he was awarded the NAACP's, Spingarn Medal for "his contribution to the healing of mankind and for his courageous position in the face of bitter attack", in 1940.
In 1939, Dr Wright was stricken with tuberculosis, likely due to lung damage during the war, and was hospitalised in Ithaca, New York. That same year he was board certified in surgery one year after the American Board of Surgery was created. Returning to the staff at Harlem Hospital in 1942, after three years in treatment and convalescence, he was unanimously elected chief of surgery, a position he held until his death. He fought for better health care, better jobs, and better education for his people, because he knew one could not separate poor health from the economic disparities that plagued African Americans. Wright envisioned strengthening the health of African American citizens and creating professional opportunities for African American physicians and nurses through the racial integration of existing private and municipal hospitals that were staffed exclusively by White doctors and nurses. As chairman of the NAACP board of directors, he led the organization’s push for equity in medicine. The NAACP leadership monitored closely the reemergence of Jim Crow policies following the end of World War II. To broaden the support for an integrationist agenda, Wright formed the NAACP National Medical Committee in 1944 and invited distinguished White physicians he regarded as colleagues and friends to serve as members. The Committee designed a comprehensive national health program.
The National Medical Committee provided critical leadership in developing NAACP policies that later became core elements of the President’s Civil Rights Commission report. Again, Wright’s activism merged with his professional responsibility as a physician to improve the quality of medical care. Wright was adamant that the NAACP refuse to support segregation and discrimination in all forms. The NAACP actively opposed the construction of Jim Crow all-Black hospitals with private, public, and Veterans Administration (VA) funding in communities in the North and South. The NAACP leadership monitored closely the reemergence of Jim Crow policies following the end of World War II. They lobbied for national health insurance legislation because of its beneficial impact on access to medical care, particularly for African Americans. Wright also discussed efforts to improve jobs and education for African Americans through litigation.
When he returned to Harlem Hospital in 1943 after his bout with tuberculosis, although he was no longer incapacitated, he was physically unable to endure an active schedule of surgery, teaching, and administration. He turned hisattention to building the institution’s research program, and in so doing sustained his own lifelong accomplishments of discovery in surgery and medicine. In the field of surgery, Wright devised a brace for transportation of patients with broken necks. He developed and held a patent for a metal plate for fractures of the knee joint. He described for the first time a rare fracture of the neck of the femur, called now the “oblique subcervical fracture of the femur.” Dr. Wright became an authority in the area of head injuries, and was asked to write a chapter in the 11th edition of "Schudder's Treatment of Fractures." In the area of infectious disease, Wright introduced the intradermal method of vaccination for smallpox.
Wright also became an authority on the use of Aureomycin, an antibiotic, as a treatment on humans in its use in the treatment of lymphogranuloma inguinale and other infectious conditions, with over 25 publications in this area. In fact, he was nominated for a World Health Organization committee because of his expertise in infectious diseases. With grants from the Public Health Service, Wright undertook clinical investigation in the treatment of cancer with chemotherapeutic agents, including triethylene melamine and folic acid antagonists. In 1948, Dr. Wright was elected president of the hospital board. Two years later, Wright wrote to a colleague that his team of investigators was able to produce changes in cancer that had not been possible just 5 years earlier. Wright had spent many years training interns and residents in surgery, teaching them research techniques, critical judgment, and objectivity in scientific investigation—a legacy that would live for generations. He knew that these men and women left the hospital well trained in the methodology required for clinical and scientific investigation.
He was honored throughout his life both for his efforts in passionate pursuit of his integrationist vision and for his skills and accomplishments as a surgeon and educator. In 1952, more than 1100 guests joined Wright in celebrating the establishment of the Louis Tompkins Wright Library at Harlem Hospital. Dr. Wright had always dreamed of a great library for the hospital, because he knew that scientific discoveries rested on an investigator’s easy access to the published literature and opportunities for research. Louis Wright died six months after the dedication dinner for the Wright Library. His death was mourned by leading citizens, White and Black, throughout the world, as well as his close circle of friends, patients, and colleagues. Posthumously, he was awarded the American Cancer Society Medal in 1953. The campaign to racially integrate hospitals and medical schools would be carried forward by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, culminating in the landmark "Simkins v. Cone" decision in 1963. It was the firm belief of Dr. Wright that equity in medical care would strengthen the health of all Americans, not only those of African American heritage. Dr. Wright is remembered as a civil rights warrior who often clashed with the establishment to make things easier for Black physicians who came after him. Louis Tompkins Wright was one of the most respected African American professionals of his time.