AIHP Honors Leo Butts, First African-American Graduate of UW School of Pharmacy
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Leo Butts on the UW Football Team in 1918
Leo Vinton Butts, class of 1920, was the first known African American graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy and the first known African-American to appear in a game for the UW varsity football team.
The son of one of Madison’s earliest African-American residents, he served his country during World War One; he was a civil rights activist; he owned and operated a pharmacy; he represented his schools on the football field; and, in his UW Ph.G. thesis, he was one of the first researchers to attempt to record the history and the contemporary status of African-Americans in the profession of pharmacy.
