Examine individual changes

'{{redirect|Theodore Howard}} {{use mdy dates|date=March 2012}} {{Infobox scientist | name = T. R. M. Howard | image = T. R. M. Howard.jpg | image_size = 180px | birth_name = Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard | birth_date = {{birth date|mf=yes|1908|03|04}} | birth_place = [[Murray, Kentucky]], [[United States|USA]] | death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1976|05|01|1908|03|04}} | death_place = [[Chicago, Illinois]], [[United States|USA]] | field = [[Surgeon]] | workplaces = | alma_mater = [[Oakwood University]]<br />[[Union College of Lincoln]]<br />[[Loma Linda University|College of Medical Evangelists]] | known_for = }} '''Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard''', MD (March 4, 1908 – May 1, 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]]. ==Biography== ===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 Church]]. 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 University|Oakwood Junior College]] in [[Huntsville, Alabama]], the then nearly all-white [[Union College (Nebraska)|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 41-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 Tabor]], 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.)"<ref name=Reason/> 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 (politician)|William L. Dawson]] of Chicago, Alderman [[Archibald Carey, Jr|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. ====Emmett Till affair==== {{Main|Emmett Till}} Howard moved into the national limelight as never before after the murder of [[Emmett Till]] 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."<ref name=Reason>{{cite web | last = Root | first = Damon | date = March 20, 2009 | url = http://reason.com/archives/2009/03/20/a-forgotten-civil-rights-hero | title = A Forgotten Civil Rights Hero | work = [[Reason magazine|Reason]]}}</ref> 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 Clotye Murdock Larsson of ''[[Ebony magazine|Ebony]]'' magazine and Rep. [[Charles Diggs]].<ref name=Reason/> "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."<ref name=Reason/> 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."<ref name=Reason/> 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."<ref name=MLK>{{cite web | last = Root | first = Damon | date = January 19, 2011 | url = http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/19/martin-luther-king-civil-right | title = Martin Luther King, Civil Rights, and Armed Self-Defense | work = [[Reason magazine|Reason]]}}</ref> 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."<ref name=MLK/> 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.<ref name=Reason/> Howard's speaking tour culminated in a 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. 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 roll. He founded the 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 wealthiest black man in the country at the time.<ref>{{cite web | last=Beito | first=David T. | title=T.R.M. Howard: Thirty Years Later | url=http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/24570.html | work=History News Network | publisher=George Mason University | date=May 1, 2006 | accessdate=February 4, 2009}}</ref> ====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 [[utopia]]n schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every [[Communism|Communist]] in America right back to [[Soviet Union|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 [[Christianity|religion]] of [[Jesus Christ]] cannot solve.'"<ref name=Reason/> 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 (politician)|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 [[Rainbow/PUSH|PUSH]] was founded in Howard's Chicago home and he chaired the organization's finance committee. ==Electoral history== {| class="wikitable" style="margin:0.5em ; font-size:95%" !|Year !|Office ! !|Republican !|Pct ! !|Democrat !|Pct ! |- |1958 |U.S House of Representatives<br />, Illinois, District 1 | |{{Party shading/Republican}} |T.R.M Howard |{{Party shading/Republican}} |27.8% | |{{Party shading/Democratic}} |'''William Dawson''' |{{Party shading/Democratic}} |72.2% |} ===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.<ref>{{cite news | author=Pamela Zekman; Pamela Warrick | title=The Abortion Profiteers | url=http://media1.suntimes.com/multimedia/high021308.pdf_20080213_00_06_02_181.imageContent | work=The Chicago Sun-Times | date=November 12, 1978 | accessdate=January 8, 2009}}</ref><ref>Illinois Death Certificate No. C612195</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book | last=Beito | first=David T. |author2=Beito, Linda Royster | title=Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power | edition=First | pages=213–214| location=Urbana | publisher=University of Illinois Press | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-252-03420-6 }}</ref> ===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 1, 1976 after many years of deteriorating health. The Reverend [[Jesse Jackson]] officiated at the funeral. ==See also== *[[List of civil rights leaders]] ==References== {{Reflist}} ==Further reading== * [https://www.facebook.com/pages/T-R-M-Howard/123663789052 T.R.M. Howard Facebook Page] * [http://reason.com/archives/2009/03/20/a-forgotten-civil-rights-hero A Forgotten Civil Rights Hero] * {{cite book | last=Beito | first=David and Linda | title=Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power | location=Urbana | publisher=University of Illinois Press | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-252-03420-6}} * {{cite book | last=Dittmer | first=John | title=Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi | location=Urbana | publisher=University of Illinois Press | year=1994 | isbn=0-252-02102-9 }} * {{cite book | last=Payne | first=Charles M. | title=I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle | location=Berkeley | publisher=University of California Press | year=1995 | isbn= 9780520085152}} * Ward, Thomas J. ''Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South.'' Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003.9 ===Video and audio material=== *{{YouTube|8OcnMSbGCTs|Video from December 1955 - interview in Los Angeles on fighting the economic pressure campaign of the White Citizens' Councils in Mississippi}} *[https://archive.org/details/EulogyForMedgarEversByT.r.m.Howard Audio recording of Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi] *[https://archive.org/details/T.r.m.HowardSpeaksAtMadisonSquareGarden1956 Speech at Madison Square Garden (introduced by A. Philip Randolph, on May 24, 1956)] {{African-American Civil Rights Movement}} {{Authority control|VIAF=9731126}} {{Persondata | NAME = Howard, Theodore Roosevelt Mason | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = Civil rights activist | DATE OF BIRTH = March 4, 1908 | PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Murray, Kentucky]], [[United States|USA]] | DATE OF DEATH = May 1, 1976 | PLACE OF DEATH = [[Chicago, Illinois]], [[United States|USA]] }} {{DEFAULTSORT:Howard, T. R. M.}} [[Category:1908 births]] [[Category:1976 deaths]] [[Category:African-American businesspeople]] [[Category:African-Americans' civil rights activists]] [[Category:History of Mississippi|African American]] [[Category:American abortion providers]] [[Category:American businesspeople]] [[Category:American hunters]] [[Category:Community activists]] [[Category:Fraternalists]] [[Category:History of African-American civil rights]] [[Category:People from Chicago, Illinois]] [[Category:People from Murray, Kentucky]] [[Category:People from Mississippi]] [[Category:African-American history of Mississippi]] [[Category:Seventh-day Adventists in health science]] [[Category:American Seventh-day Adventists]] [[Category:Oakwood University alumni]] [[Category:African-American physicians]] [[Category:20th-century African-American activists]] [[Category:Union College (Nebraska) alumni]] [[Category:Illinois Republicans]] [[Category:American anti-communists]]'