Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a private, federally chartered historically black university in Washington, D. C. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in more than 120 programs. The University is located in the heart of Washington’s African-American community. It is a nonsectarian and open to people of all sexes and races.

About Howard University in brief

Summary Howard UniversityHoward University is a private, federally chartered historically black university in Washington, D. C. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in more than 120 programs, more than any other HBCU in the nation. The U.S. Congress chartered Howard on March 2, 1867, and much of its early funding came from endowment, private benefaction, and tuition. In its first five years of operation, Howard University educated over 150,000 freed slaves. The first sitting president to speak at Howard was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. In 1989, Howard gained national attention when students rose up in protest against the appointment of then-Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater as a new member of the university’s board of trustees. In April 2007, the head of the faculty called for the ouster of Howard President Patrick Hertert, saying the school was saying the wrong thing. Within days, both Atwater and Howard’s President, James E. Cheek, resigned from their positions. The university’s 122nd anniversary celebrations were held on September 11, 2013. The event was attended by more than 10,000 students. The University is located in the heart of Washington’s African-American community. It is a nonsectarian and open to people of all sexes and races. In 1975 the historic Freedman’s Hospital closed after 112 years of use as Howard University College of Medicine’s primary teaching hospital. In the same year, Jeanne Sinkford became the first dean of any American dental school when she was appointed as the dean of Howard’s University’s dental school of dentistry.

The Howard University School of Divinity is located on the same campus as the University of Washington. It was founded in 1867 by General Oliver Otis Howard, a Civil War hero, who was both the founder of the University and, at the time, Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Dr. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Sr., was Howard University’s first African-Americans president. 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. 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. By January 1943, students had begun to organize regular sit-ins and pickets at cigar stores and cafeterias around D.C. which refused to serve them because of their race. These protests continued until the fall of 1944. Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Toure, coined the term ‘Black Power’ and worked in Lowndes County, Alabama as a voting rights activist. The Great Depression years of the 1930s brought hardship to campus. Despite appeals from Eleanor Roosevelt, Howard saw its budget cut below Hoover administration levels during the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.