William Fletcher Penn
Graduate of Yale School of Medicine, 1897
Biography
William Fletcher Penn was born in 1871 in New Glasgow, Virginia. He attended the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now Virginia State University) before starting medical school at Leonard Medical College in Raleigh, NC. He then moved to Yale School of Medicine in 1894. He earned his MD in 1897.
He was a prominent doctor and surgeon in Atlanta and also served as chief of surgery at the US Veterans’ Hospital in Tuskegee, AL. He was a founding member of the Atlanta NAACP, a founder of the Fair Haven Infirmary, and a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
Shortly after graduating from Yale, Penn met his wife Lula Tompkins Wright and they married in 1899. Penn’s stepson, Louis T. Wright, was a surgeon and civil rights activist who went on to chair the NAACP.
William F. Penn died in New York City in 1934.
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Yale Affiliation
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Decade(s) at Yale
Publications
"The Influence of Carbohydrates Upon Metabolism in Fever." M.D. diss., Yale University, 1897.