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Howard University

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Howard University is an historically black university in Washington, D.C. Notable alumni include Toni Morrison, Thurgood Marshall, Ossie Davis, Debbie Allen, and Phylicia Rashad.

Contents

Background

Howard was established by a congressional charter in 1867, and much of its early funding came from the Freedmen's Bureau. The college was named after General Oliver O. Howard who was commissioner of the Freeman Bureau and the college's first president. From its outset, it was nonsectarian and open to people of both sexes and all races. Howard has graduate schools of law, medicine, dentistry and divinity, in addition to the undergraduate program. The current enrollment (as of 2003) is approximately 11,000, including 7,000 undergraduates. It should also be noted that the university's football homecoming activities serve as one of the premier annual events in Washington.

History

Founders Library is an iconic building on the Howard University campus that has been declared a National Historic Landmark.
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Founders Library is an iconic building on the Howard University campus that has been declared a National Historic Landmark.

Howard University has played an important role in civil rights history on a number of occasions. After being refused admission to the then-white-only University of Maryland School of Law, a young Thurgood Marshall enrolled at Howard University School of Law instead. There he studied under Charles Hamilton Houston, a Harvard Law School graduate and leading civil rights lawyer who at the time was the dean of Howard's law school. Houston took Marshall under his wing, and the two forged a friendship that would last for the remainder of Houston's life and forever change America. Howard University was the site where Marshall and his team of legal scholars from around the nation prepared to argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

Major improvements, additions, and changes occurred at the school in the aftermath of World War One. In 1918, all the secondary schools of the university were abolished and the whole plan of undergraduate work changed. The four-year college course was divided into two periods of two years each, the Junior College, and the Senior Schools. The semester system was abolished in 1919 and the quarter system substituted. Twenty-three new members were added to the faculty between the reorganization of 1918 and 1923. A dining hall building with class rooms for the department of home economics was built in 1921 at a cost of $301,000. A greenhouse was erected in 1919. Howard Hall was renovated and made a dormitory for girls; many improvements were made on campus; J. Stanley Durkee, became president in 1918.

Five of the National Pan-Hellenic Council nine member organizations were founded at Howard University beginning in 1908, after Alpha Phi Alpha established its second chapter, Beta, in 1907 at Howard.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech to the graduating class at Howard, where he outlined his plans for civil rights legislation.

Schools & Colleges

Presidents of Howard University

•  Charles B. Boynton 1867
•  Byron Sunderland 1867 – 1869
•  Oliver Otis Howard 1869 – 1874
•  Edward P. Smith 1875 – 1876
•  William W. Patton 1877 – 1889
•  Jeremiah E. Rankin 1890 – 1903
•  John Gordon 1903 – 1906
•  Wilbur P. Thirkield 1906 – 1912
•  Stephen M. Newman 1912 – 1918
•  James S. Durkee 1918 – 1926
•  Mordecai Wyatt Johnson 1926 – 1960
•  James M. Nabrit 1960 – 1969
•  James E. Cheek 1969 – 1989
•  Franklyn G. Jenifer 1990 – 1994
•  H. Patrick Swygert 1995 –

Notable alumni

Howard University has conferred 99,318 degrees and certificates in its 137-year history. Noteworthy alumni are educators, politicians, United States ambassadors, writers, prominent international figures, corporate executives, and a Nobel Laureate.

Academia

Arts, Media, Music & Literature

Civil Rights

Law & Politics

Systems and Computer Science

See also

Trivia

In an article from the Museum of Broadcast Communications, the Hollywood Reporter is quoted as stating that when Howard alumna Debbie Allen became the producer-director of the popular television series, A Different World (which dealt with the life of students at the fictional historically Black college, Hillman, and ran for six seasons on NBC), Allen, herself,

a graduate of historically black Howard University--drew from her college experiences in an effort to accurately reflect in the show the social and political life on black campuses. Moreover, Allen instituted a yearly spring trip to Atlanta where series writers visited two of the nation's leading black colleges, Morehouse and Spelman. During these visits, ideas for several of the episodes emerged from meetings with students and faculty" [link].

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