Immediately after graduating from college, Wright began working as a junior high school teacher. Later, he became a teaching fellow at George Washington University from 1936 to 1937. Then from 1939 to 1943, he began teaching history at the University of Oregon. He left to be a specialist at the U.S. State Department from 1943 to 1944. Late in 1944, Wright led a convoy of vehicles and personnel from Lisbon to Paris to bring reinforcements to the newly reopened embassy, while the fighting was still going on. Afterward, he was told by the State official who gave him this assignment that he was not expected to complete his mission. He stayed in France as a US Foreign Service officer at the embassy in Paris for two years after the war. In 1947, he returned to the University of Oregon as the History Department Chair until 1957.