T. R. M. Howard
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T. R. M. Howard | |
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Union College of Lincoln College of Medical Evangelists | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Surgeon |
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (March 4, 1908 – May 1, 1976) was an American
Howard founded Mississippi's leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the
Early life and education
Theodore Roosevelt Howard was born in 1908 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 a second middle name.[1]
His medical career was fostered out of his relationship to Mason, as he worked closely with Mason as his protége. Howard attended three Adventist colleges:
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 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 married prominent black socialite Helen Nela Boyd; they were married 41 years. 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
Mason quickly took notice of Howard's intelligence and was a supporter of his education and medical training. This led Howard to his position as the chief medical director and surgeon at an Adventist sanitarium in Nashville, Tennessee. Like countless other Black medical professionals of this time, he was met with extreme resentment and discrimination from his colleagues. The turmoil was so great that Howard transferred, in 1942, to the hospital of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor and took over as the first chief surgeon.
The IOTKDT is a
He also 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 Black people 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 abortions (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.)"[2]
In 1947, he broke with the Knights and Daughters after backlash from the IOTKDT over his popular status. This led to his creation of a competing organization, The United Order of Friendship America (UOFA).[3]
He created the "Friendship Medical Clinics" that provided medical services for the Black community that were otherwise very difficult to attain. His patients were from all backgrounds, however, and expanded on ideals of medical equality and national health that he saw were absent. His efforts also included initiatives for education, voting rights, and employment for the black community. He was also involved in several rallies that attracted civil rights leaders from across the nation as well as politicians and celebrities. From this, Howard gained more public attention, and was even featured in an article in the
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, whom 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.
Arenia Mallory, a principal of a private black school in the county seat Lexington, Mississippi, was also on the board of directors of the RCNL. 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 organization frequently organized popular demonstrations supporting civil rights and voter registration. The success of the RCNL threatened white citizens in Mississippi for several reasons, but especially in the organization's success in improving black voter registration. By 1954, there were more than 20,000 newly registered black voters in Mississippi.
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. Speakers included 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. In turn, the bank made funds available for loans to victims of the economic squeeze in Mississippi.
Emmett Till
Howard moved into the national limelight after the murder of
Visitors noticed the high level of security, including armed guards and a plethora of weapons. Historians
After an
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, former First Lady 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 accused J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, of being slow to find killers of blacks in the South.
In early 1956, the
Howard also became medical director of S.B. Fuller Products Company. Samuel B. Fuller was likely the wealthiest black man in the United States at the time.[5]
Politics
Howard was unusual among prominent civil rights leaders because he strongly opposed socialism. He consistently praised the educator
His medical and political endeavors exposed him to the generational poverty among the black community in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, leading him to give public support for the desegregation of schools. Once the decision of Brown v. Board of Education was public, there was increasing violence aimed at members of the UOFA and Howard himself. Despite this, Howard continue to fight for educational and medical equity and, as mentioned, was integral in the investigation and trial of the murder of Emmett Till.
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 because of the economic recession and the reluctance of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower to back the civil rights movement in the South. Black Republicans began to believe they were not well represented by that party.
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 of Chicago.
In the two decades after the 1958 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 black 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.
Through this period, he became well known as a leading abortion provider, although the procedure was still illegal until 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women had a right to this procedure. He was arrested in 1964 and 1965 for allegedly performing abortions in Chicago but was never convicted. Howard regarded this work as complementary to his earlier civil rights activism.[5] His medical philosophy and commitment to medical equity clearly shaped his political motivations. The challenges he faced in his career are a testament to his commitment to change and fearlessness amidst a tumultuous and divided political era.
- Electoral history
Year | Office | Republican | % | Democratic | % | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1958 | U.S House of Representatives, Illinois, District 1 | T.R.M Howard | 27.8% | √ William Dawson | 72.2% |
Friendship Medical Center
In 1972, Howard founded the multi-million-dollar Friendship Medical Center on the South Side, the largest privately owned black clinic in Chicago. The staff of about 160 included 27 doctors in such fields as pediatrics, dental care, a pharmacy, ENT (ear, nose, and throat) care, and psychological and drug counseling.[5]
Within an hour after the decision in Roe v. Wade was announced in 1973, FMC performed the first legal abortions in Illinois. After a spate of bad publicity,[when?] "Howard stated that the FMC had performed 1,500 legal abortions thus far, more than any other Illinois provider. Given such numbers, he concluded, six major complications were not unusual." Howard also believed the various controversies were "a smokescreen by the medical and political establishment to quash their lower-priced competitors" because "an abortion at the FMC cost about fifty dollars less than at hospitals." He also felt the push to require abortions to be performed only in hospitals would "push the already limited capacity of hospitals beyond the breaking point." One local hospital had been performing 18 abortions per week, whereas FMC had been set up to perform 60–100 abortions per day.[6]
In 1978, the
Death
Howard died in Chicago on May 1, 1976, after many years of deteriorating health. The Reverend Jesse Jackson officiated at the funeral.[citation needed]
Depictions
Howard is portrayed by Roger Guenveur Smith in the film Till (2022), a dramatization of the Emmett Till case.[9]
See also
References
- ISBN 978-1-59813-312-7.
- ^ Reason.
- ^ T. R. M. Howard (1908–1976) Physician and Civil Rights Leader, mississippiencyclopedia.org. Accessed November 8, 2022.
- ^ Reason. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
- ^ a b c Beito, David T. (May 1, 2006). "T.R.M. Howard: Thirty Years Later". History News Network. George Mason University. Retrieved July 1, 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-59813-312-7.
- ^ a b The Abortion Profiteers by Pamela Zekman, Pamela Warrick, Chicago Sun-Times, November 1978
- ^ Former Doctor did Abortions, State Charges, Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1989
- ^ Schaffstall, Katherine (October 31, 2022). "'Till': 10 of the Film's Stars and Their Real-Life Inspirations". The Hollywood Reporter.
Further reading
- T.R.M. Howard Facebook Page
- Beito, David and Linda (2018). T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer. Oakland: Independent Institute. ISBN 978-1-59813-312-7.
- ISBN 0-252-02102-9.
- ISBN 9780520085152.
- Ward, Thomas J. Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003.9
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 on YouTube
- 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)