Charles H. Wright
*Charles H. Wright was born on this date in 1918. He was a Black physician, author, and philanthropist.
Charles Howard Wright was born in Dothan, Alabama. He graduated from Southeast High School in 1935. He attended Alabama State College (now Alabama State University), graduating in 1939, and entered Meharry Medical College, graduating in 1943. Wright served two residencies in pathology, one at Harlem Hospital in New York City and the second at Cleveland City Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
Wright practiced general medicine in Detroit from 1946 until 1950, when the Harlem Hospital notified him of an opening in their Obstetrics and Gynecology residency program. He returned to New York and completed his residency there in 1953. Wright met and married Louise Lovett, a Librarian from Chicago, in 1950. They had two children. When Wright returned to Detroit, he worked at the Hutzel Women's Hospital and became board-certified as a general surgeon and OB/GYN specialist in 1955. He became a Senior Attending Physician at Hutzel Hospital until his retirement in 1986.
He was also an attending physician at Harper-Grace Hospital and a senior attending physician at Sinai Hospital. He served as an assistant clinical professor of OB-GYN at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Public service In 1960, Wright ordered funds for medical training for Africans in the United States through the Detroit Medical Society. Between 1964 and 1965, Wright engaged in medical surveys in West Africa. He served as a physician during the civil rights marches in 1965 in Bogalusa, Louisiana.
He authored and published the Medical Association Demand Equal Opportunity and wrote two books on Paul Robeson: Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion and The Peace Advocacy of Paul Robeson. In 1965, Wright opened the International Afro-American Museum on West Grand Boulevard. The next year, he opened a traveling exhibit to tour the state.
In 1978, Detroit agreed to lease the museum a plot of land in Midtown. Groundbreaking for the new museum occurred in 1985, and was renamed the Museum of African American History. A larger museum was built ten years later, opening in 1997. In 1998, the museum was renamed the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in dedication to Dr. Wright. The library contains the Louise Lovett Library, which is dedicated to Louise Wright for her work in creating the library. Louise Lovett Wright died in 1985. Wright married Roberta Hughes in 1989. Charles Wright died on March 7, 2002.
