Howard University

Howard University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States.

Howard was established by a charter in 1867, and much of its early funding came from endowment, private benefaction, and tuition. An annual congressional appropriation administered by the Secretary of the Interior funded the school.[citation needed] It was named for founder Oliver Otis Howard who was commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau and who later served as a president of the school. Today, it is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and is partially funded by the US Government, which gives approximately $235 million annually. From its outset, it was nonsectarian and open to people of both sexes and all races. Howard has graduate schools of pharmacy, law, medicine, dentistry and divinity, in addition to the undergraduate program. The current enrollment is approximately 11,000, including 7,000 undergraduates. The university’s football homecoming activities serve as one of the premier annual events in Washington.

Howard University has played an important role in American history and the Civil Rights Movement on a number of occasions. Alain Locke, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and first African American Rhodes Scholar, authored The New Negro, which helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance. Ralph Bunche, the first Nobel Peace Prize winner of African descent, served as chair of the Department of Political Science. Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Toure, a student in the Department of Philosophy and the Howard University School of Divinity coined the term “Black Power” and worked in Lowndes County, Alabama as a voting rights activist. Historian Rayford Logan served as chair of the Department of History. E. Franklin Frazier served as chair of the Department of Sociology. Sterling Allen Brown served as chair of the Department of English.

Young Lincoln University graduate Thurgood Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but was told that he would not be accepted due to the school’s segregation policy. 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. 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.

Presidents of Howard University 1867 Charles B. Boynton
1867 – 1869 Byron Sunderland
1869 – 1874 Oliver Otis Howard
1875 – 1876 Edward P. Smith
1877 – 1889 William W. Patton
1890 – 1903 Jeremiah E. Rankin
1903 – 1906 John Gordon
1906 – 1912 Wilbur P. Thirkield
1912 – 1918 Stephen M. Newman
1918 – 1926 J. Stanley Durkee
1926 – 1960 Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
1960 – 1969 James M. Nabrit
1969 – 1989 James E. Cheek
1990 – 1994 Franklyn G. Jenifer
1994-1995 Joyce A. Ladner
1995 – 2008 H. Patrick Swygert
2008 – present Sidney A. Ribeau
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, Howard’s last white president, was appointed in 1918.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech to the graduating class at Howard, where he outlined his plans for civil rights legislation and endorsed aggressive affirmative action to combat the effects of years of segregation of blacks from the nation’s economic opportunities.

In 1989, Howard gained national attention when students rose up in protest against the appointment of then-Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater as a new member of the university’s Board of Trustees. Student activists disrupted Howard’s 122nd anniversary celebrations, and eventually occupied the university’s Administration building. Within days, both Atwater and Howard’s President, James E. Cheek, resigned.

In April 2007 the head of the faculty senate called for the ouster of Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, saying that the school was in a state of crisis and it was time to end “an intolerable condition of incompetence and dysfunction at the highest level.” This came on the heels of several criticisms of Howard University and its management.

On May 7, 2008 Howard announced the appointment of Sidney Ribeau of Bowling Green State University to its presidency.

Howard University
Motto: Veritas et Utilitas
Motto in English: Truth and Service
Established: March 2, 1867 (1867-03-02)
Type: Private, HBCU
Endowment: US$524.1 million
Chairman: Addison Barry Rand
President: Sidney A. Ribeau, Ph.D.
Faculty: 3,933
Students: 11,200
Location: Washington, D.C.,
United States
Campus: Urban; 258 acres (1.0 km?)
Former names: Howard Normal and Theological School for the Education of Teachers and Preachers
Associations: Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools
Sports: basketball, swimming, volleyball, tennis, soccer, football
Colors: Red, White, and Blue
Nickname: Bison
Athletics: NCAA Division I
Website: www.howard.edu

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply