David French, surgeon for the civil rights movement, dies

David French, a surgeon who helped victims of racial violence during civil rights demonstrations of the '60s, died March 31 at age 86:

The health care provider and public servant organized first-aid efforts during major civil rights marches, including the historic –and bloody--voting rights march from Selma, Ala. to that state’s capitol in Montgomery in 1965 that was led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

During one Mississippi protest in 1966, French and his wife Carolyn Howard used their family van as an ambulance to provide first aid for casualties when the non-violent demonstrators were attacked by locals, including police, opposed to the civil rights march on the state capitol, according to a Washington Post obituary.