Louis Tompkins Wright, MD, FACS (July 23, 1891 – October 8, 1952) was an American surgeon and civil rights activist. In his position at Harlem Hospital he was the first African-American on the surgical staff of a non-segregated hospital in New York City. He was influential for his medical research as well as his efforts pushing for racial equality in medicine and involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he served as chairman for nearly two decades. Early life and family Wright was born in LaGrange, Georgia. His father, Ceah Ketchan Wright, was born enslaved but obtained formal education, finishing medical school as valedictorian but later giving up his medical practice to be a Methodist minister. Ceah died shortly after Louis's birth and his mother, a sewing teacher named Lula Tompkins, remarried in 1899. Also a physician, Louis's step-father, William Fletcher Penn, was the first African-American to graduate from Yale School of Medicine. Penn, who became a prominent doctor in Atlanta and was the first African-American to own an automobile in the city, had a strong influence on Louis both as a physician and through the racism Louis watched him endure. Wright graduated from Clark Atlanta University in 1911 and received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1915, finishing fourth in his class. Wright's admission to Harvard Medical School must be recognized as no easy feat. Despite being a very educated individual, Wright was deemed unfit by Channing Frothingham, MD––one of the medical school's interviewers––due to his attendance of an undergraduate institution that permitted blacks. However, after subjecting Wright to numerous tests, Frothingham ultimately ruled that he had "adequate chemistry for admission to this school." He completed his postgraduate work at Howard University-affiliated Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, DC before returning to Georgia. He married public school teacher Corinne Cooke, and the couple had two daughters, Jane Cooke Wright and Barbara Wright Pierce, both of whom also became physicians and researchers. Medical career Shortly after completing medical school and moving back to Georgia, Wright joined the Army Medical Corps, serving as a lieutenant during World War I, stationed in France. While there he introduced intradermal vaccination for smallpox and was awarded the Purple Heart after a gas attack. Upon returning to the United States in 1919, he moved to New York amid racial tensions in Georgia to set up a private practice in