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Howard University
2 articles on Howard University
Howard University
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 1561 Includes: BibliographyHoward University—dubbed in its early years as “the capstone of Negro education”—was incorporated in 1867 to provide education for young men and women of any race but especially for freeborn and emancipated African Americans. The institution was named after Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909), a white Union general during the Civil War who had been an ardent abolitionist. The initial plans for the university took form in November 1866, when a group of white members of the First Congregational Society in Washington, D.C., resolved to establish a theological seminary to train African American pastors to minister to the needs of the newly freed population. Between November 1866 and January 1867the group decided that a seminary was not enough; instead, they proposed a full-scale university that would include a college ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 906 Includes: BibliographyPredominantly black university located in Washington, D.C., with the largest concentration of African American students and faculty of any university in the world. Like many of more than one hundred Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States, Howard was founded by whites. In 1866 ten members of the First Congregational Society of Washington, D.C., established the Howard Normal and Theological Institute for Education of Teachers and Preachers. The seminary, named in honor of the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, Major General Oliver Otis Howard, received its university charter from President Andrew Johnson in March 1867. Two months later, the board of trustees shortened its name to Howard University and opened its doors to four young white girls—the daughters of some of the ...
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