Howard University is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research extensive historically black university in Washington, D.C. Affectionately known as "Black Harvard," Howard was established in 1867 by congressional order and named after Oliver O. Howard. Notable alumni include Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (Howard University Law School), Ossie Davis, Debbie Allen, Roberta Flack, Claude Brown, Shaka Hislop, Richard Smallwood and Phylicia Rashad. Howard University is the number one producer of African American Ph.D.'s in the nation.

Howard was established by a congressional 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. Today, it is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. The college was named after General Oliver O. Howard who was commissioner of the Freeman's Bureau and the college's third 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. 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 Rennisance. 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 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.

After being refused admission to the then-white-only University of Maryland School of Law, a young Lincoln University, PA graduate 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.

Howard was the founding of the Alpha chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma, and Zeta Phi Beta, all National Pan-Hellenic Council members.

Major improvements, additions, and changes occurred at the school in the aftermath of World War I. New buildings were built under the direction of architect Albert Cassell. 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.

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

Website: http://www.howard.edu

1. Krystal Taylor