Lemuel Diggs attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he received his medical degree in 1925. He became a University of Tennessee in Memphis faculty member in 1929 and then became Director of Medical Laboratories.  Diggs helped create the first blood bank in the South in 1938 in Memphis.  This was only the fourth blood bank in the US. He also helped Danny Thomas create the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 1962 in Memphis.

Each year TABB honors a person for rendering a significant and lasting contribution to blood banking in the state of Tennessee.