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
fraternal organization, in
Mound Bayou, Mississippi, founded, occupied and governed by
freedmen after the
Civil War. Howard had already been an active participant in the civil rights movement, but it was here that his activist and medical philosophies began to intersect, especially in his considerations of medical inequity and social determinants of health. Howard is known for energizing the city's agricultural economy by introducing jobs, livestock, and new farming equipment to his over 1,000 acres of farmland. 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.)" 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
Saturday Evening Post by Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher
Hodding Carter II. He sought the support of political actors for his public health endeavors, most famously in his failed attempt to erect a Veteran's Hospital with the help of two white supremacist Senators. This demonstrated his desire to close the ideological divides in politics and hopefully foster relationships with his opponents. 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 African Americans 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
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 if "the slaughtering of Negroes is allowed to continue,
Mississippi will have a civil war. Negroes are only going to take so much." He was deeply involved in the search for evidence in the case. He allowed his home to be a "black command center" for witnesses and journalists, including
Clotye Murdock Larsson of
Ebony magazine and Rep.
Charles Diggs. He brought Emmett's mother
Mamie to the city from
Chicago at his own expense, and she stayed at his home when she came to testify at the trial. Howard "escorted [Bradley] and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan."
Politics Howard was unusual among prominent civil rights leaders because he strongly opposed socialism. He consistently praised the educator
Booker T. Washington, late president of the
Tuskegee Institute, whom he regarded as a "towering genius" for his emphasis on self-help and entrepreneurship. He "had little patience for the
utopian schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every
Communist in America right back to
Russia where they belong.' In a similar vein, he said, 'There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi today that real
Jeffersonian democracy and the
religion of
Jesus Christ cannot solve'." In 1978, the
Chicago Sun-Times published a 15-part series titled
The Abortion Profiteers, exposing the dirty underbelly of the
abortion industry in Chicago. Dr. Arnold Bickham — a doctor who worked at Howard's Friendship Medical Center performing abortions from 1973 to 1975, and who went on to run several other abortion clinics, including one he
also named "Friendship Medical Center" after Howard's death — was one of several Chicago-area abortion practitioners featured in the 1978
investigative report. The reporters stated that three women died from hemorrhages in 1973 and 1974 after abortions at FMC, and several others died after abortions at Bickham's other clinics, Biogen and Water Tower. ==Death==