T. R. M. Howard
Encyclopedia
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (4 March 1908 – 1 May 1976) was an American civil rights
leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur
and surgeon
. He was one of the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers
, Charles Evers
, Fannie Lou Hamer
, Amzie Moore
, Aaron Henry
, and Jesse Jackson
, founded Mississippi's leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership
, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till
. He was also president of the National Medical Association
and chairman of the board of the National Negro Business League
.
. Mason took note of the boy’s work habits, talent, ambition, and charm. He put him to work in his hospital and eventually paid for much of his medical education. Howard later showed his gratitude by adding Mason as one of his middle names.
Howard attended three Adventist colleges; the historically black Oakwood Junior College in Huntsville, Alabama
, the then nearly all-white Union College
in Lincoln, Nebraska
, and the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University
) in Loma Linda, California
. While at Union College, he won the Anti-Saloon League
of America’s national contest for best orator in 1930.
During his years in medical school in California, Howard took part in civil rights and political causes and wrote a regular column for the California Eagle
, the main black newspaper of Los Angeles
. He was also the president of the California Economic, Commercial, and Political League. Through the League and his columns, he championed black business ownership, the study of black history, and opposed local efforts to introduce segregation. In 1935, he began a forty-one year marriage with prominent black socialite, Helen Nela Boyd. After a residency at Homer G. Phillips Hospital (in St. Louis, Missouri), Howard became the medical director of the Riverside Sanitarium, the main Adventist health care institution to serve blacks.
, a fraternal organization, in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi
. While there, he founded an insurance company, restaurant, hospital, home construction firm, and a large farm where he raised cattle, quail, hunting dogs, and cotton. He also built a small zoo and a park as well as the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. "In addition to his duties at the hospital, Howard operated a thriving private practice, where his specialties soon included the discreet provision of illegal abortion
s (for both black and white patients), a practice he justified as a matter of both individual rights and family planning
. (He also favored legalizing prostitution
, arguing that man’s sinful nature made it impossible to suppress the sex trade.)"
In 1947, he broke with the Knights and Daughters, organized the rival United Order of Friendship, and opened the Friendship Clinic.
Howard rose to prominence as a civil rights leader after founding the Regional Council of Negro Leadership
(RCNL) in 1951. His compatriots in the League included Medgar Evers
, who Howard had hired as an agent for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company and Aaron Henry
, a future leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
. The RCNL mounted a successful boycott against service stations that denied restrooms to blacks and distributed twenty thousand bumper stickers with the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom."
The RCNL organized yearly rallies in Mound Bayou for civil rights. Sometimes as many as ten thousand attended including such future activists as Fannie Lou Hamer
and Amzie Moore
. Some of the speakers were Rep. William L. Dawson of Chicago, Alderman Archibald J. Carey, Jr.
of Chicago, Rep. Charles Diggs
of Michigan
, and NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall
. One of the entertainers was Mahalia Jackson
.
In 1954, Howard hatched a plan to fight a credit squeeze by the White Citizens Councils against civil rights activists in Mississippi. At his suggestion, the NAACP under Roy Wilkins
encouraged businesses, churches, and voluntary associations to transfer their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis. The funds were made available for loans to victims of the squeeze.
in August 1955 and the trial of his killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant in September. He delivered "[o]ne of the earliest and loudest denunciations of Till’s murder," saying that that if “the slaughtering of Negroes is allowed to continue, Mississippi
will have a civil war
. Negroes are only going to take so much." He was also heavily involved in the search for evidence and gave over his home to be a “black command center” for witnesses and journalists, including Cloyte Murdock of Ebony magazine and Rep. Charles Diggs
. "Recognizing that local officials had little incentive to identify or punish every member of the conspiracy that took Till’s life, he spearheaded a private investigation, personally helping to locate, interview, and protect several important witnesses."
Visitors noticed the high level of security, including armed guards and a plethora of weapons. Historians David T. Beito
and Linda Royster Beito
have written that Howard's residence “was so impregnable that journalists and politicians from a later era might have used the word ‘compound’ rather than ‘home’ to describe it.” Howard evaded Mississippi’s discriminatory gun control
laws by hiding a pistol in a secret compartment of his car, and "slept with a Thompson submachine gun
at the foot of his bed." He brought Emmett's mother Mamie Till Bradley in from Chicago
at his own expense, and she stayed at his home when she came to testify. Howard "escorted [Bradley] and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan." Like many black journalists and political leaders, Howard alleged that more than two people took part in the crime.
After an all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant, Howard gave dozens of speeches around the country on the Till killing and other violence in Mississippi, typically to crowds of several thousand. One of them was to an overflow crowd on November 27 in Montgomery, Alabama
, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
. His host for the event was Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks
was in the audience. Many years later, she singled out Howard’s appearance as the “first mass meeting that we had in Montgomery” following Till’s death. Only four days after his speech, Parks made history by refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white man in violation of a segregation ordinance.
Howard's speaking tour culminated in rally for twenty thousand at Madison Square Garden
where he was the featured speaker. He shared the stage with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
, A. Philip Randolph
, Eleanor Roosevelt
, and Autherine Lucy
.
In the final months of 1955, Howard and his family were increasingly subjected to death threats and economic pressure. He sold most of his property and moved permanently to Chicago, Illinois. His national reputation as a civil rights leader still seemed secure. He also had a highly visible public dispute with J. Edgar Hoover
whom he accused of slowness to find the killers of blacks in the South.
In early 1956, the Chicago Defender
gave Howard the top spot on its annual national honor role. He founded the profitable Howard Medical Center on the South Side and served for one year as president of the National Medical Association
, the black counterpart of the AMA. Howard also became medical director of S.B. Fuller Products Company. Samuel B. Fuller
was probably the richest black man in the country.
n schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every Communist
in America right back to Russia
where they belong.' In a similar vein, he maintained, 'There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi
today that real Jeffersonian democracy
and the religion
of Jesus Christ cannot solve.'"
In 1958, Howard ran for Congress as a Republican against the powerful incumbent black Democrat, Rep. William L. Dawson, a close ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley
. Although he received much favorable media publicity, and support from leading black opponents of the Daley machine, Dawson overwhelmed him at the polls. Howard was unable to counter Dawson's efficient political organization and rising voter discontent from the economic recession and the slowness of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
to back civil rights in the South.
Shortly before the election, Howard helped to found the Chicago League of Negro Voters. The League generally opposed the Daley organization and promoted the election of black candidates in both parties. It nurtured the black independent movement of the 1960s and 1970s which eventually propelled four of Howard’s friends to higher office: Ralph Metcalfe
, Charles Hayes, and Gus Savage
to Congress and Harold Washington
as mayor.
In the two decades after the election, Howard had little role as a national leader but he remained important locally. He chaired a Chicago committee in 1965 to raise money for the children of the recently assassinated leader, Malcolm X
. Later, he was an early contributor to the Chicago chapter of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket
under Jesse Jackson
. In 1971, Operation PUSH
was founded in Howard's Chicago home and he chaired the organization's finance committee.
Howard died in Chicago on May 1st, 1976 after many years of deteriorating health. The Reverend Jesse Jackson
officiated at the funeral.
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and surgeon
Surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...
. He was one of the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi...
, Charles Evers
Charles Evers
James Charles Evers is a prominent American civil rights advocate. The older brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Charles Evers is a leading civil rights spokesman within the Republican Party in his native Mississippi. In 1969 he became the first African American since the...
, Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader....
, Amzie Moore
Amzie Moore
Amzie Moore was an African American, civil rights leader, and entrepreneur in the Mississippi Delta.-Early life:Moore was born on the Wilkin plantation near the Grenada and Carroll County lines...
, Aaron Henry
Aaron Henry
Aaron Henry was an American civil rights leader, politician, and head of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP. He was one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.-Early life:Henry was born in Dublin,...
, and Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
, founded Mississippi's leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership
Regional Council of Negro Leadership
The Regional Council of Negro Leadership was a society in Mississippi founded by T. R. M. Howard in 1951 to promote a program of civil rights, self-help, and business ownership...
, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till
Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
. He was also president of the National Medical Association
National Medical Association
The National Medical Association is the largest and oldest national organization representing African American physicians and their patients in the United States...
and chairman of the board of the National Negro Business League
National Negro Business League
The National Negro Business League was an American organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900 by Booker T. Washington, with the support of Andrew Carnegie...
.
Early years
Howard was born in Murray, Kentucky to Arthur Howard, a tobacco twister, and Mary Chandler, a cook for Will Mason, a prominent local white doctor and member of the Seventh-day Adventist ChurchSeventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
. Mason took note of the boy’s work habits, talent, ambition, and charm. He put him to work in his hospital and eventually paid for much of his medical education. Howard later showed his gratitude by adding Mason as one of his middle names.
Howard attended three Adventist colleges; the historically black Oakwood Junior College in Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County. The city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsville's population was 180,105 as of the 2010 Census....
, the then nearly all-white Union College
Union College (Nebraska)
Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska is a four-year coeducational college owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Midwest. It opened in 1891.T.R.M...
in Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
, and the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University
Loma Linda University
Loma Linda University is a Seventh-day Adventist coeducational health sciences university located in Loma Linda, California, United States. The University comprises eight schools and the Faculty of Graduate Studies...
) in Loma Linda, California
Loma Linda, California
Loma Linda is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States, that was incorporated in 1970. The population was 23,261 at the 2010 census, up from 18,681 at the 2000 census...
. While at Union College, he won the Anti-Saloon League
Anti-Saloon League
The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. It was a key component of the Progressive Era, and was strongest in the South and rural North, drawing heavy support from pietistic Protestant ministers and their...
of America’s national contest for best orator in 1930.
During his years in medical school in California, Howard took part in civil rights and political causes and wrote a regular column for the California Eagle
California Eagle
The California Eagle was one of the oldest and longest-running African American newspapers in Los Angeles, California and the West. It started in 1879, founded by John J. Neimore, who had escaped slavery in Missouri...
, the main black newspaper of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. He was also the president of the California Economic, Commercial, and Political League. Through the League and his columns, he championed black business ownership, the study of black history, and opposed local efforts to introduce segregation. In 1935, he began a forty-one year marriage with prominent black socialite, Helen Nela Boyd. After a residency at Homer G. Phillips Hospital (in St. Louis, Missouri), Howard became the medical director of the Riverside Sanitarium, the main Adventist health care institution to serve blacks.
Career
In 1942, Howard took over as the first chief surgeon at the hospital of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of TaborInternational Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor
The International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor is a black fraternal organization best known as the sponsor of the Taborian Hospital. It was founded in 1872 in Independence, Missouri by Rev. Moses Dickson, an ex-slave born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 5, 1824...
, a fraternal organization, in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi
Mound Bayou, Mississippi
Mound Bayou is a city in Bolivar County, Mississippi. The population was 2,102 at the 2000 census. It is notable for having been founded as an independent black community in 1887 by former slaves led by Isaiah Montgomery. By percentage, its 98.4 percent African-American majority population is one...
. While there, he founded an insurance company, restaurant, hospital, home construction firm, and a large farm where he raised cattle, quail, hunting dogs, and cotton. He also built a small zoo and a park as well as the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. "In addition to his duties at the hospital, Howard operated a thriving private practice, where his specialties soon included the discreet provision of illegal abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s (for both black and white patients), a practice he justified as a matter of both individual rights and family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
. (He also favored legalizing prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, arguing that man’s sinful nature made it impossible to suppress the sex trade.)"
In 1947, he broke with the Knights and Daughters, organized the rival United Order of Friendship, and opened the Friendship Clinic.
Howard rose to prominence as a civil rights leader after founding the Regional Council of Negro Leadership
Regional Council of Negro Leadership
The Regional Council of Negro Leadership was a society in Mississippi founded by T. R. M. Howard in 1951 to promote a program of civil rights, self-help, and business ownership...
(RCNL) in 1951. His compatriots in the League included Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi...
, who Howard had hired as an agent for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company and Aaron Henry
Aaron Henry
Aaron Henry was an American civil rights leader, politician, and head of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP. He was one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.-Early life:Henry was born in Dublin,...
, a future leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement...
. The RCNL mounted a successful boycott against service stations that denied restrooms to blacks and distributed twenty thousand bumper stickers with the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom."
The RCNL organized yearly rallies in Mound Bayou for civil rights. Sometimes as many as ten thousand attended including such future activists as Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader....
and Amzie Moore
Amzie Moore
Amzie Moore was an African American, civil rights leader, and entrepreneur in the Mississippi Delta.-Early life:Moore was born on the Wilkin plantation near the Grenada and Carroll County lines...
. Some of the speakers were Rep. William L. Dawson of Chicago, Alderman Archibald J. Carey, Jr.
Archibald Carey, Jr
Archibald J. Carey, Jr was an American lawyer, judge, politician, diplomat and clergyman from the south side of Chicago. He was an alderman for many years under the patronage of powerful African-American politician William L. Dawson. For many years Judge Carey was a major figure in Chicago's...
of Chicago, Rep. Charles Diggs
Charles Diggs
Charles Coles Diggs, Jr. was an African-American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan. Diggs was an early member of the civil rights movement, having been present at the murder trial of Emmett Till and elected the first chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.Diggs resigned from the...
of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, and NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
. One of the entertainers was Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson – January 27, 1972) was an African-American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel"...
.
In 1954, Howard hatched a plan to fight a credit squeeze by the White Citizens Councils against civil rights activists in Mississippi. At his suggestion, the NAACP under Roy Wilkins
Roy Wilkins
Roy Wilkins was a prominent civil rights activist in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. Wilkins' most notable role was in his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ....
encouraged businesses, churches, and voluntary associations to transfer their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis. The funds were made available for loans to victims of the squeeze.
Emmett Till Affair
Howard moved into the national limelight as never before after the murder of Emmett TillEmmett Till
Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
in August 1955 and the trial of his killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant in September. He delivered "[o]ne of the earliest and loudest denunciations of Till’s murder," saying that that if “the slaughtering of Negroes is allowed to continue, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
will have a civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
. Negroes are only going to take so much." He was also heavily involved in the search for evidence and gave over his home to be a “black command center” for witnesses and journalists, including Cloyte Murdock of Ebony magazine and Rep. Charles Diggs
Charles Diggs
Charles Coles Diggs, Jr. was an African-American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan. Diggs was an early member of the civil rights movement, having been present at the murder trial of Emmett Till and elected the first chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.Diggs resigned from the...
. "Recognizing that local officials had little incentive to identify or punish every member of the conspiracy that took Till’s life, he spearheaded a private investigation, personally helping to locate, interview, and protect several important witnesses."
Visitors noticed the high level of security, including armed guards and a plethora of weapons. Historians David T. Beito
David T. Beito
David T. Beito is a historian and professor of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression ; From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 ; The Voluntary City: Choice,...
and Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito is chair of the department of social sciences at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.-Biography:Beito was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She earned her Ph.D...
have written that Howard's residence “was so impregnable that journalists and politicians from a later era might have used the word ‘compound’ rather than ‘home’ to describe it.” Howard evaded Mississippi’s discriminatory gun control
Gun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
laws by hiding a pistol in a secret compartment of his car, and "slept with a Thompson submachine gun
Thompson submachine gun
The Thompson is an American submachine gun, invented by John T. Thompson in 1919, that became infamous during the Prohibition era. It was a common sight in the media of the time, being used by both law enforcement officers and criminals...
at the foot of his bed." He brought Emmett's mother Mamie Till Bradley in from Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
at his own expense, and she stayed at his home when she came to testify. Howard "escorted [Bradley] and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan." Like many black journalists and political leaders, Howard alleged that more than two people took part in the crime.
After an all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant, Howard gave dozens of speeches around the country on the Till killing and other violence in Mississippi, typically to crowds of several thousand. One of them was to an overflow crowd on November 27 in Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. The church was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974. In 1978 the official name was changed to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped to organize the...
. His host for the event was Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
was in the audience. Many years later, she singled out Howard’s appearance as the “first mass meeting that we had in Montgomery” following Till’s death. Only four days after his speech, Parks made history by refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white man in violation of a segregation ordinance.
Howard's speaking tour culminated in rally for twenty thousand at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
where he was the featured speaker. He shared the stage with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was an American politician and pastor who represented Harlem, New York City, in the United States House of Representatives . He was the first person of African-American descent elected to Congress from New York and became a powerful national politician...
, A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington...
, Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, and Autherine Lucy
Autherine Lucy
Autherine Juanita Lucy was the first black student to attend the University of Alabama, in 1956.She was born on October 5, 1929 in Shiloh, Alabama and graduated from Linden Academy in 1947....
.
In the final months of 1955, Howard and his family were increasingly subjected to death threats and economic pressure. He sold most of his property and moved permanently to Chicago, Illinois. His national reputation as a civil rights leader still seemed secure. He also had a highly visible public dispute with J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
whom he accused of slowness to find the killers of blacks in the South.
In early 1956, the Chicago Defender
Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender is a Chicago based newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers.In just three years from 1919–1922 the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks....
gave Howard the top spot on its annual national honor role. He founded the profitable Howard Medical Center on the South Side and served for one year as president of the National Medical Association
National Medical Association
The National Medical Association is the largest and oldest national organization representing African American physicians and their patients in the United States...
, the black counterpart of the AMA. Howard also became medical director of S.B. Fuller Products Company. Samuel B. Fuller
Samuel B. Fuller
S. B. Fuller was an American entrepreneur. He was founder and president of the Fuller Products Company, publisher of the New York Age and Pittsburgh Courier, head of the South Side Chicago NAACP, president of the National Negro Business League, and a prominent black Republican.S.B...
was probably the richest black man in the country.
Politics
Howard was somewhat unique among prominent civil rights leaders by virtue of his outspoken opposition to socialism and consistent praise of Booker Washington who he regarded as a "towering genius" for his emphasis on self-help and entrepreneurship. He "had little patience for the utopiaUtopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in America right back to Russia
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
where they belong.' In a similar vein, he maintained, 'There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
today that real Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian Democracy, so named after its leading advocate Thomas Jefferson, is a term used to describe one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The term was commonly used to refer to the Democratic-Republican Party which Jefferson...
and the religion
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
of Jesus Christ cannot solve.'"
In 1958, Howard ran for Congress as a Republican against the powerful incumbent black Democrat, Rep. William L. Dawson, a close ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley served for 21 years as the mayor and undisputed Democratic boss of Chicago and is considered by historians to be the "last of the big city bosses." He played a major role in the history of the Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F...
. Although he received much favorable media publicity, and support from leading black opponents of the Daley machine, Dawson overwhelmed him at the polls. Howard was unable to counter Dawson's efficient political organization and rising voter discontent from the economic recession and the slowness of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
to back civil rights in the South.
Shortly before the election, Howard helped to found the Chicago League of Negro Voters. The League generally opposed the Daley organization and promoted the election of black candidates in both parties. It nurtured the black independent movement of the 1960s and 1970s which eventually propelled four of Howard’s friends to higher office: Ralph Metcalfe
Ralph Metcalfe
Ralph Harold Metcalfe was an African-American athlete and politician who came second to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Metcalfe jointly held the world record for the 100 meter sprint. Metcalfe was known as the world’s fastest human from 1932 through 1934...
, Charles Hayes, and Gus Savage
Gus Savage
Augustus Alexander "Gus" Savage is a former Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois....
to Congress and Harold Washington
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.- Early years and military service :...
as mayor.
In the two decades after the election, Howard had little role as a national leader but he remained important locally. He chaired a Chicago committee in 1965 to raise money for the children of the recently assassinated leader, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
. Later, he was an early contributor to the Chicago chapter of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket
Operation Breadbasket
Operation Breadbasket was an organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of black communities across the United States of America....
under Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
. In 1971, Operation PUSH
Push
-Music:* Push , an album by Bros* Push , a Belgian disc jockey born Mike Dierickx* Push , an album by Gruntruck* "Push" , a song by Enrique Iglesias...
was founded in Howard's Chicago home and he chaired the organization's finance committee.
Friendship Medical Center
In 1972, Howard founded the multimillion dollar Friendship Medical Center on the South Side, the largest privately owned black clinic in Chicago. The staff of about one hundred and sixty included twenty-seven doctors in such fields as pediatrics, dental care, a pharmacy, ear, nose, and throat, and psychological and drug counseling. Friendship Medical Center fell into scandal when the Chicago Sun-Times, along with the Better Government Association, investigated Chicago abortion practices. The Sun-Times reported the deaths of three Friendship Medical Center abortion patients, including one who died in 1973 after an abortion that her survivors alleged had been performed by Howard himself. Howard countered that the FMC had performed 1,500 legal abortions thus far, more than any other Illinois provider. Given such numbers, he concluded, only six major complications were not unusual. A lack of detailed comparative statistics makes it almost impossible to determine if he was right. To Howard, the hue and cry was a smokescreen by the medical and political establishment to quash their lower-priced competitors. He had a basis for this belief. An abortion at the FMC cost about fifty dollars less than at hospitals.Personal life
During his years in Chicago, Howard's attention increasingly focused on big game hunting, and made several trips to Africa for this purpose. His Chicago mansion included a “safari room” filled with trophies that was often made available for public tours. His New Year’s Eve parties, co-hosted by Helen Howard, were a regular stop for the Chicago’s black social set. He also became well-known as a leading abortion provider and was arrested in 1964 and 1965 but never convicted. Howard regarded this work as complementary to his earlier civil rights activism.Howard died in Chicago on May 1st, 1976 after many years of deteriorating health. The Reverend Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
officiated at the funeral.
Further reading
- Ward, Thomas J. Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003.
Video and audio material
- Video from December 1955 - interview in Los Angeles on fighting the economic pressure campaign of the White Citizens' Councils in Mississippi
- Audio recording of Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi
- Speech at Madison Square Garden (introduced by A. Philip Randolph, on May 24, 1956