Louis T. Wright, M.D.

"There is no use saving the Negro from being lynched, or educating for sound citizenship if he is to die prematurely as a result of murderous neglect by America's health agencies solely on account of his race or color." ~ Dr. Louis Wright, 1937

Louis Tomkins Wright was born in LaGrange, Georgia, on July 23, 1891. His father was a doctor who had left medical practice to go into ministry and was a district superintendent for the Methodist Episcopal Church at the time of his death in 1895. Wright's stepfather, Fletcher Penn, was also a physician, being the first African American graduate of Yale Medical School. He practiced in Atlanta.

Wright received a bachelor's degree from Clark Atlanta University where he was class valedictorian, and was admitted to Harvard Medical School. He graduated fourth in his class yet was unable to find an internship in the Boston area. He was accepted by Freedmen's Hospital in Washington DC (affiliated with Howard University), and while there researched the use of the Schick test for diphtheria on African Americans.

Wright returned to Atlanta where he went into practice with his stepfather. In 1916 NAACP Field Secretary James Weldon Johnson came to Atlanta to start a local chapter. Wright joined and was elected treasurer. This marked the beginning of his life-long friendship with Walter White who was chapter secretary. At the outbreak of World War I Wright joined the Army Medical Corps and served in France, where he won a Purple Heart after being exposed to phosgene gas.

After the war, Wright settled in New York City, where he worked for the Health Department at applied for staff privileges at Harlem Hospital. When he was hired at the hospital six months later, four white physicians resigned in protest and Dr. Cosmo O'Neal, the hospital director who hired him, was transferred to working the gate-booth at Bellevue Hospital. However, other African American doctors were subsequently hired and the New York City Civil Service Commission reorganized the administration of the city's hospitals, creating the Department of Hospitals. By 1929 Wright had been promoted to assistant visiting surgeon and was also named NYPD Police Surgeon. He became the first African American to become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (1934) and to become a Board Certified Surgeon, one year after the Board was created (1939).

Inspired by the discrimination he had experienced and overcome throughout his career, Wright fought for equality in medical education and in medical care for all people. He continued be be active with the NAACP and was elected to its Board of Directors in 1931, becoming Chairman in 1934. Reunited with Walter White, who had become Executive Director, he secured funding from the Carnegie Foundation to research and make recommendations concerning health care needs of African Americans. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1940.

In 1939 Wright was stricken with tuberculosis, likely due to lung damage during the war, and was hospitalized in Ithica, New York, for most of the next three years. Returning to the staff at Harlem Hospital in 1942, he was named Director of the Department of Surgery, and the physical limitations from his illness led him to concentrate on research. He developed a metal plate for knee fractures and a neck brace, as well as becoming known as becoming known as an expert on head injuries and skull fractures. He headed the team that first used Aureomycin, and published over 35 papers on the use of antibiotics. He was also one of the pioneers of chemotherapy in treating cancer. In total, he had approximately 100 papers published in medical journals.

The library at Harlem Hospital was named in Wright's honor months before he passed away on October 8, 1952 at the age of 60. Colleague Aubrey Maynard, who had been the first African American intern at Harlem Hospital in 1926, wrote these words recalling the occasion:

“Like some of his era, [Wright] had viewed with cold horror the scene of a lynching. He had known the surging fury of defiance when a mob moved toward his home and family. From boyhood he had felt the spur and the obligation to gain educational and professional status to fulfill the aspirations of devoted parents. He had been a black soldier in a white man’s army which fostered segregation and seethed with prejudice and injustice. Through the depression he had struggled to support his family as a doctor in the ghetto. Physical disability had eroded his strength. He had learned the promises and evasions and maneuvers—and occasionally the successes—of political life in a racist society. Step by step, he had gained professional and personal stature. Now, at his celebration of his sixtieth birthday, he cherished the hope that untold thousands would pass to fulfilled lives through the doors that he had opened. His friends, who remembered the long years, rejoiced with him.”

The above quotation is from the  June 2000 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, which contains an excellent article on Dr. Wright and the status of health care for African Americans at the time of his research.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. 

An outspoken crusader against lynching and one of the founders of the NAACP, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, 35 miles southwest of Memphis. She attended a local Freedman's School which is now Rust College, but dropped out to support her younger brothers and sisters by teaching after their parents died of yellow fever. She earned $30 per month although white teachers in the area were paid $80. With three younger sisters, she soon moved to Memphis where she taught and attended summer classes at Fisk University.

In 1884 she refused to move to a "Jim Crow" car on a Chesapeake & Ohio train, and was dragged from the train by the conductor and two other men while white passengers cheered. She sued the railroad and was awarded $500 in damages; the decision was overturned by the Tennessee State Supreme Court.

While teaching, she began to write about race relations for the Free Speech and Headlight, a Memphis anti-segregation newspaper, and other publications. She later became editor and co-owner of the paper. In 1892 while she was in Natchez selling newspaper subscriptions, a local grocery store owned by three African American men was attacked by white men who were resentful of its success. The owners defended the store and were arrested for shooting three of the invaders. Once in jail, they were taken out and killed.

Mrs. Wells-Barnett wrote about the lynching, and her articles appeared in newspapers across the country. She also urged African Americans to leave Memphis or, if they stayed, to boycott white businesses. She began to research lynchings and published a pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases setting forth her finding that most were a result of minor infractions of the law or to eliminate business competition. Few were in response to rape, despite the popular belief, and she stated that most inter-racial sex was consensual. While on another out-of-town trip, the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight were destroyed, and instead of returning to Memphis she settled in Chicago.

With other leaders such as Frederick Douglass, she organized a boycott of the Chicago World's Fair and continued her research, publishing The Red Record. She wrote for the Chicago Conservator, the oldest African American newspaper in the city, and in 1895 married its former editor, Ferdinand L. Barnett, an Assistant State Attorney. 

While raising a family of four children, she continued to crusade against lynching, traveling throughout the United States and Great Britain. She also worked to improve living conditions in Chicago, and with Jane Addams blocked the segregation of the city's schools. In 1909 she was one of two African American women to sign "The Call", leading to the founding of the NAACP. 

"I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people."

Niagara Movement

"We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America. The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans. It is a fight for ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its founding, become in truth the land of the thief and the home of the slave -- a byword and a hissing among the nations for its sounding pretensions and pitiful accomplishment."  ~ from Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles

The Niagara Movement began with a group of 29 African American men led by W. E. B. DuBois who met in Fort Erie, Ontario on July 11, 1905. Other founders include William Monroe Trotter, Frederick McGhee and C E Bentley. There are claims that the group met in Canada because they were denied accommodations in neighboring Buffalo, but it is more likely that they wanted a more secluded spot to gather or were unable to find space due to an Elks' convention. Their purpose was to seek equality in housing, education, the judicial system, the military, employment, and other areas of life in which it was denied during the Jim Crow era. They stood in direct contrast to the gradualist and conciliatory views of Booker T. Washington as expressed in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech.

Meetings in subsequent years were held at historically significant sites such as Harper's Ferry, West Virginia; Faneuil Hall, Boston; and Oberlin, Ohio. (The first meeting place had been chosen because of the importance of Western New York in the Underground Railroad.) Although there were local civil rights victories, the group was never able to grow beyond about 200 members because of lack of funding and staff, as well as opposition by Washington and his supporters. 

Reaction to the Springfield Race Riots of 1908 galvanized white allies connected to the Niagara Movement, including Mary White Ovington, who had been invited to join. Ovington and others merged with the Niagara Movement to form the NAACP the following year. Dr. DuBois became the only African American member of the founding Board of Directors, and his leadership provided continuity between the two organizations. The Niagara Movement formally disbanded in 1911.

Mary McLeod Bethune

"If our people are to fight their way up out of bondage we must arm them with the sword and the shield and buckler of pride - belief in themselves and their possibilities, based upon a sure knowledge of the achievements of the past.... Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds."

One of the most outstanding American women of the twentieth century, Mary McLeod Bethune was born July 10, 1875 near Mayesville, South Carolina. She founded the Literary and Industrial Training School for Girls in Daytona, Florida in 1904 in a house rented for $11 per month, selling sweet potato pies and fried fish to raise money. She also solicited donations from wealthy businessmen such as developer Henry Flagler and Proctor & Gamble magnate James Gamble, who was on the school's board of directors. In 1923, it merged with the Cookman Institute for Men and is now Bethune-Cookman University, with over 3000 students.


While serving as the school's president until 1947, Mrs. Bethune was active in many other areas. She was State President of the National Association of Colored Women from 1917 to 1925, and served as the organization's National President for one year. She was also President of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1920 to 1925. In 1935 she founded the National Council of Negro Women, bringing together 28 separate groups.

Bethune and students, 1910

Her involvement in national affairs started when Calvin Coolidge asked her to take part in the Child Welfare Conference in 1928. Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health. Her life-long friendship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt led to her being appointed director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration and to her participation in the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, an advisory committee to President Roosevelt also known as the "Black Cabinet". She served as a consultant to the U. S. Secretary of War in choosing African American female officers during World War II.


In addition to government duties, she was Vice President of the NAACP from 1940 to 1945, and was a leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church South as a delegate to General Conference from 1928 through 1944 and working to integrate the church. She participated in the founding of the United Nations as a part of the NAACP with W. E. B. DuBois and Walter White. From 1936 to 1951 she was President of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded by Carter Woodson.


She received the Springarn Medal in 1935, and in 1973 was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. A statue in her honor was erected in Washington DC engraved with these words from her essay "Last Will and Testament":

I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you, finally, a responsibility to our young people.

Gwendolyn Bennett

"Texans feel they have a claim on her and that the beautiful and poignant lyrics she writes resulted partially from the impression of her early Texas surroundings. ~ J Mason Brewer, folklorist

To a Dark Girl

I love you for your brownness,
And the rounded darkness of your breast,
I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow's mate,
Keep all you have of queenliness,
Forgetting that you once were slave,
And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

Gwendolyn Bennett was born July 8, 1902 in Giddings, Texas between Austin and Houston. She spent her childhood on the Paiute Indian Reservation in Nevada where her parents taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in Washington DC, and in New York City. She graduated from both Columbia University and the Pratt Institute in 1924 and for one year taught design and crafts at Howard University. She attended the Academie Julian and Ecole du Pantheon in Paris.

The Pipes of Pan
by Gwendolyn Bennett

Bennett's first published work was in the NAACP's Crisis Magazine in November 1923. She later designed covers for the magazine. Her work also appeared in Opportunity, the magazine of the National Urban League, and she became its assistant editor in 1926. There, she wrote a column entitled "The Ebony Flute" showcasing artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and co-founded the literary journal Fire, where her best-known short story "Wedding Day" was published. She also started a support group for young writers such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. 

She married in 1927 and moved to Florida but returned to New York when she was widowed in 1936. She led the Harlem Community Art Center and was on the board of the Negro Playwrights Guild. She also helped develop the George Washington Carver Community School and worked for the Consumers Union during the later years of her life. She died in Pennsylvania on June 30, 1981.

Thurgood Marshall

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody -- a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns -- bent down and helped us pick up our boots." ~ Thurgood Marshall

The grandson of slaves, Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore on July 2, 1908. He attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where his classmates included Langston Hughes, Kwame Nkrumah, and Cab Calloway. Denied entrance to the University of Maryland Law School, he applied to Howard University where he graduated at the top of his class.

In 1936 he followed law school mentor Charles Hamilton Houston to New York, where he became Chief Counsel of the NAACP. He served as director of the Legal Defense and Education Fund for over 20 years, winning 29 out of 32 cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. During this time he was also asked by the United Nations to help draft constitutions for the emerging democracies of Ghana and what is now Tanzania.

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (covering New York, Connecticut and Vermont). In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him U.S. Solicitor General, and in 1967 to the U.S. Supreme Court where he was the first African American to serve. Despite the increasingly conservative makeup of the court, he retained his life-long commitment to freedom and equality for all Americans. He retired due to failing health in 1991, and died on January 24, 1993.

Walter F. White

"I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me." ~ A Man Called White, Walter F. White

Born in Atlanta, Georgia on July 1, 1883, White was one of the organizers of the Atlanta Chapter of the NAACP. In 1918, James Weldon Johnson asked him to join the national staff as Assistant National Secretary. He investigated lynchings and riots throughout the country, using his appearance -- 27 of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents were white -- to gain information about groups such as the KKK. These findings were used to support the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1923 but defeated due a filibuster in the Senate.

In 1931 White succeeded Johnson as leader of the NAACP. He created the Legal Defense Fund under Charles Hamilton Houston, who soon recruited protege Thurgood Marshall. He also worked closely with President Truman in the 1948 desegregation of the military. He lead the NAACP until his death in 1955 and saw a five-fold increase in membership to 500,000.

White was also part of the Harlem Renaissance, writing novels Fire in the Flint, based on his experiences investigating lynchings, and Flight, on the migration of southern African Americans to the cities of the north. He also promoted the work of other writers such as poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.