T. R. M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer

by David T. Beito, Linda Royster Beito, Jerry W. Mitchell, David & Linda Beito

Overview

T. R. M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer tells the remarkable story of one of the early leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. A renaissance man, T. R. M. Howard (1908-1976) was a respected surgeon, important black community leader, and successful businessman. Howard's story reveals the importance of the black middle class, their endurance and entrepreneurship in the midst of Jim Crow, and their critical role in the early Civil Rights Movement.

In this powerful biography, David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito shine a light on the life and accomplishments of this civil rights leader. Howard founded black community organizations, organized civil rights rallies and boycotts, mentored Medgar Evers, antagonized the Ku Klux Klan, and helped lead the fight for justice for Emmett Till. Raised in poverty and witness to racial violence from a young age, Howard was passionate about justice and equality. Ambitious, zealous, and sometimes paradoxical, T. R. M. Howard provides a complete portrait of an important leader all too often forgotten.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598133141
Publisher:	Independent Institute, The
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	356
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David T. Beito is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor of History at the University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin, and he is the recipient of the Ellis Hawley Prize. Professor Beito is the author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression,From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, and T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, and Civil Rights Pioneer (with Linda Royster Beito).

Former President of the Alabama Scholars Association and Chair of the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Professor Beito is the Founder of the "Liberty and Power" blog at the History News Network.

An urban and social historian, Professor Beito has published in the Journal of Southern History, Journal of Policy History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Urban History, The Independent Review, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Journal of Firearms and Public Policy, and other scholarly journals. And, his popular articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Perspectives, History News Network, National Review, Reason, and elsewhere.

Linda Royster Beito is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor and Dean of Arts and Science at Stillman College. She received her M.S. in criminal justice and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Alabama, and she has been Assistant Professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice at the University of South Alabama.

Professor Beito is the author of the book, Leadership Effectiveness in Community Policing, and her articles have appeared in Social Science History, Journal of Firearms and Public Policy, The Independent Review, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, History News Network, and International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Up from the Black Patch

IT WAS JANUARY 1956. As T. R. M. Howard looked back, he had many reasons to feel a sense of pride. He was one of the wealthiest blacks in Mississippi, had treated thousands of patients as chief surgeon in two of the state's largest black hospitals, and had won election to the presidency of the National Medical Association, the leading black medical society in the United States. His national reputation as a civil rights leader seemed secure. As the founder of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, he had mentored an emerging generation of activists, including Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer. In September 1955, Howard had played a pivotal role finding witnesses and evidence in the Emmett Till murder case. At the beginning of 1956, his prospects for a greater future on the national stage looked bright. The Chicago Defender had just ranked him first in its annual honor roll.

At age forty-seven, Howard had risen far from his humble origins living in abject rural poverty amid pervasive racial violence. These characteristics set him apart from most of his approximate peers in age and prominence on the national civil rights scene just before the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. They were far more likely to come from middle-class and urban backgrounds. He was born as Theodore Roosevelt Howard on March 2, 1908, in Murray, Calloway County, Kentucky. His parents were Arthur Howard and Mary Chandler Howard. Like their parents before them, they were unskilled tobacco-factory workers. As an article in Howard's college paper later stated, Arthur, inspired by a "spirit of patriotism," had insisted that their first child be named after President Roosevelt. It proved an apt choice, for Theodore's life would often mirror that of his famous namesake.

The Howards had lived for decades in the Black Patch area of western Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee, so named because of the highly prized olive-colored dark-leaf tobacco grown there. They initially labored to grow the crop but later worked in the factories to refine it for chewing purposes. The Black Patch had cast its lot with the Confederacy and segregation was rigid. In the Tennessee portion, blacks almost completely lost the franchise after Reconstruction, but in Kentucky they continued to vote, usually for Republicans, and to serve on juries. But these rights were tenuous and circumscribed by whites, who voted overwhelmingly Democratic.

The Howards originally hailed from Henry County, Tennessee, just south of Calloway County. Theodore's paternal grandfather, Richard Howard, was born a slave in 1863 or 1864. In common with most blacks in the region, he never advanced beyond the economic margins of society. Like his wife, Mary Lassiter Howard, he could neither read nor write. Her father, Andrew Lassiter, was about twenty years old when the Civil War ended. He was Theodore's most direct link to slavery. Theodore may have had Lassiter in mind when he later referred to a story from his "grandfather" who "just before the Civil War ... had begun to 'feel something.' It was something that works just like religion. He didn't explain what it was, but he said, 'There was something in there that made me feel the war would soon be over and I would soon be free.'"

In 1907 Arthur Howard, then only seventeen, married Mary Chandler, who was a year younger. Like the Howards, the Chandlers had an uninterrupted family history of grim poverty and backbreaking toil. Mary's father, Henry Chandler, was born in May 1865, only a month after Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia. He left the farm to be a laborer in a nearby tobacco factory, a typical occupation for blacks in Murray. His wife, Almeda, was a washerwoman in a private home. She was the first of Howard's known ancestors to read and write. Like their parents, Arthur and Mary drifted into semiurban unskilled labor. Arthur secured employment as a twister of chewing tobacco in a factory in Murray, but he may have supplemented the family income through moonshining. Roughly one-third of the town's 2,139 inhabitants were black in 1910, a proportion much higher than the county average.

Mary Howard brought her son Theodore into the world at a time when tensions in Murray were especially high. The year 1908 was probably the most violent in the town's history. As the tobacco wars encroached on Calloway County, locals felt compelled to choose sides. The trouble had started after 1904 when leading Black Patch farmers formed the Planter's Protective Association. The goal was to counter the buying power of the big tobacco companies by pooling their crops in association-owned warehouses. By selling collectively, they hoped to get a higher price than what the tobacco trust usually paid. Within a year, seven out of ten farmers in the Black Patch pledged their crops to the association. But even this level of cooperation did not bring enough market control to determine the price. Independent growers throttled the association's plan by continuing to sell at lower prices directly to the companies. In 1905, frustrated by the failure to establish a cartel to oppose the big companies through voluntary cooperation, some members of the association turned to terror by forming the Night Riders.

Hooded and prowling by night, the Night Riders terrorized all those who did not toe the line for the Planter's Protective Association. Night Riders traveled in mounted patrols that burned crops, warehouses, and factories, destroyed seedbeds, and, in some cases, committed murder. For a brief period, race was not an issue and some black farmers even joined the association. This changed as resentment mounted against the big companies who flaunted "racial etiquette" by purchasing tobacco from blacks at lower prices. The association discovered that blacks might be convenient scapegoats to hide its failure to coerce independent growers. By 1907 many Night Riders in western Kentucky went on a rampage, determined to drive out black farmers. An incidental goal was to make a killing of another sort by snatching up abandoned black property at bargain rates. In desperation, Governor Augustus E. Willson took measures to enforce law and order. He went so far as to take the serious step of announcing his intention to pardon individuals who shot Night Riders.

At the beginning of 1908, the epidemic of violence edged perilously close to Murray. In February and March, whites inspired by the Night Riders attacked blacks in Marshall County (bordering Calloway on the north). Local blacks pleaded in vain for legal protection as they bore the brunt of a sustained campaign to expel them. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported: "encouraged by the failure of the Marshall County officials to prosecute whitecaps who have warned and whipped blacks, 100 men rode into Birmingham on March 8, and shot seven men and whipped five others." Blacks fought back — killing three assailants — but this provided only a temporary respite. Overwhelmed by superior numbers, they began to flee. The black population in Marshall County plummeted from 348 in 1900 to 135 in 1910. Less than three weeks after the attacks, the Night Riders lynched a black farmer in Trigg County (just east of Calloway) on the pretext that he packed tobacco for a big company.

One day after Howard was born, the press reported that the first "real night riders have appeared in Calloway county" and were intimidating independent growers and burning barns. A few tried to scare blacks into leaving Murray. The attackers played on white fears that blacks, who had begun to move into white neighborhoods, were "getting out of their place." Violence escalated later in March when more than two hundred masked Night Riders assembled in the eastern part of the county in preparation for a direct assault on Murray. They called it off only after hearing that citizens were carrying guns and determined to resist. On April 2, County Judge A. J. G. Wells of Murray, the nemesis of the Night Riders, warned that he had "direct information from the riders themselves that before the moon changes, they will swoop down on Murray and burn property and beat her citizens and continue to beat and bruise the farmers over the county." Although the announced targets were prominent buyers and bankers, Murray's five hundred or so blacks had every reason to expect an orgy of racial slaughter.

The planned sack of Murray fell apart after the arrival of a detachment of state troops, sent by the governor. This time the Night Riders had gone too far: law-and-order forces in Murray, backed by the governor, rounded up most of the ringleaders. Despite this, a local observer commented that "hardly a farmer comes to town without being heavily armed, and the sale of pistols, rifles and shotguns by local merchants recently has been unprecedented. Many women, also, are armed, practically every housewife has a rifle handy." After a mysterious fire destroyed several stores, the city council passed a law allowing citizens to shoot on sight any suspected Night Riders. The Night Riders were a spent force by the end of 1908. In their wake, they had left a trail of death and destruction, marking these years as the bloodiest in Kentucky since the Civil War.

While the demise of the Night Riders gave some breathing space to the Howards and other blacks, the violence of 1908 left a lasting imprint on Murray's black community. The younger generation, brought up on stories of the Night Riders, embraced armed self-defense. During the 1890s, the famous anti-lynch activist Ida B. Wells had highlighted how blacks in Paducah had successfully used guns to ward off racist attacks. In comments that would have resonated with blacks in Murray, she recommended that "a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. ... The more the Afro American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched."

For young Theodore, however, the most immediate physical threat was in his own home. Jealousy, fear, and violence had tainted the Howard marriage almost from the beginning. Arthur beat his young wife repeatedly and, on at least one occasion, broke open her lip with his fists. Mary left Arthur for good in December 1910 after he threw a smoothing iron at her that, had it hit with full force, could have killed her. When her father, Henry Chandler, testified at the divorce hearing, he described his son-in-law as a man of "quick and ill temper. Get mad at nothing. He's got a temper like this: He don't want his wife to go nowhere nor say nothing to nobody nor speak to nobody, and do just as he says all the time."

Although Arthur stayed in the community for several more years, he did not show up at the hearing when the judge granted a divorce. Mary and three-year-old Theodore moved in with her parents. Her life took a happy turn when, in 1913, she married Morris Palmer who, like her previous husband, worked in a tobacco factory. They had six children together. Morris was apparently a hard worker and good husband and was respected in the community. The marriage brought her young son some stability.

The poverty of Theodore's childhood was typical of blacks in the area. Almost no middle class existed among them. The vast majority rented their shacks and toiled in unskilled occupations, mostly in the tobacco industry. The family subsisted on a regular diet of biscuits and little else. If any meat was available, the eldest child ate first. Theodore was expected to contribute to the meager family budget and was resourceful in turning up ways to make money. He shined shoes, sold newspapers, and perfected his hunting skills. He later recalled that when he was ten his mother gave him twenty cents each Sunday to buy four shotgun shells. Her instructions were to return with either two rabbits, two squirrels, or one of each for the family table. She warned him not to waste shells on quail because "there wasn't enough meat on 'em."

Theodore grew up in the close-knit black neighborhood of "Pooltown," derisively nicknamed "Darktown" by local whites. It was also home to his great-grandfather, and four grandparents. He was particularly close to Almeda Chandler, his maternal grandmother, who had helped to raise him after the divorce. She imparted a sense of history and nurtured his prodigious work ethic. In later years, he often referred to her high expectations and encouragement. The annual Emancipation Day festivities in August reinforced the traditions instilled by Theodore's family and community. Blacks throughout the region flocked to the annual celebration in Paducah. There they heard speeches about their history, feasted on picnic lunches, and participated in sporting contests. Reflecting the stereotypes of the period, the Paducah Evening Sun reported in 1913, "several thousand dusky celebrators of Emancipation Day invaded Paducah today for their annual joy-making. ... At least eighty coaches filled with Negroes from Western Kentucky and Tennessee were brought to the city."

Although Emancipation Day was a reminder of liberation and opportunity, whites never let Theodore forget that he was a second-class citizen. Black people had more rights in Murray than in Mississippi or Alabama, but they still were subject to Jim Crow. Theodore attended the Murray Colored School, later called the Douglass School. Despite poor facilities, including weathered, hand-me-down textbooks, the black teachers often boasted a better record in attendance and enrollment than their white counterparts. The fact that blacks in Kentucky continued to vote, occasionally served in Republican conventions, and sometimes tipped the scales in close elections gave some solace. Even so, they took care not to give whites a pretext to use the specter of "Negro domination" against them.

The color line was somewhat more permeable in the tobacco factories where Howard's parents and grandparents worked. His grandfather, Henry Chandler, eventually rose to the job of classer. His duties were to assess the quality of the tobacco product for later sale — a task rarely entrusted to blacks. But Chandler always had to be on guard. In 1910, for example, white workers at the Griffin and Pitts tobacco factory in Murray went on strike after management hired a black classer. The white classers refused to work with him. Their immediate subordinates, four black rousters, in turn, vowed not to perform their duties. In an open letter, six of the striking white classers took special note of the "impudence of these four negro rousters" and angrily reminded their employers "that 95 per cent of the tobacco deliverd [sic] to this firm is raised by the sweat and toil of the Anglo Saxon."

Racial violence was the most terrifying reminder of white supremacy. Whites lynched fifty-four blacks in Kentucky between 1900 and 1919. The Murray Ledger, published by Night-Rider sympathizer O. J. Jennings, added fuel to the fire. Its news coverage was racist, even for western Kentucky. The stories ranged from condescending to inflammatory. The double standard was all too evident in its coverage of a twenty-year prison sentence for a white man who killed a "negro wench." With obvious disgust, an article called it one of the "severest sentences ever given by a Calloway county jury" for a white killing a black person. When the Ledger reported killings of blacks by other blacks, the general approach was to make light of the circumstances with such headlines as "Another Negro Emancipated" and "Another Murray Coon Is Dead."

In 1916, the Murray Ledger reprinted an unusually long story about a nightmarish double lynching that took place in broad daylight in neighboring McCracken County. The events were of more than passing local interest because one of those lynched was Brack Kenley, a native of Murray who had moved to Paducah but occasionally returned to take part in bootlegging. The authorities in Paducah had locked him up on a charge of violent "criminal assault" (which seems to have included alleged rape) of a white woman who lived on a farm. An enraged mob, identified as Illinois Central Railroad employees, broke into the jail with sledgehammers and crowbars and marched Kenley two miles to the alleged victim's house, where she identified him as the culprit.

As they prepared to string him up to a tree, Kenley's cousin drew a pistol and threatened to shoot into the crowd, now numbering as many as ten thousand. The mob proceeded to hang him as well: "Both bodies were riddled with bullets from the pistols of the enraged members of the mob, a fire built under the negroes and their bodies burned to ashes. Then the mob disbursed [sic], leaving the charred remains of the two negroes to the solitary buzzard, which slowly circled above the grewsome scene." When the flames died down, spectators picked over the bone fragments and other remains for souvenirs. The Louisville Courier-Journal called this "exhibition of bestiality too disgusting to be described adequately. ... Everyone knew the possibility of it happening in Paducah was great, yet no effort was made to take the prisoner out of danger or to offer real protection. Those features make the degradation of Paducah complete." Blacks in Paducah did not react passively. At least fifty attempted to purchase guns and ammunition from local hardware stores after news reached them about the lynching. Several weeks later, a grand jury adjourned without an indictment when more than one hundred witnesses pled ignorance when asked to name members of the mob.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

FOREWORD / Jerry W. Mitchell

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Up from The Black Patch
2. The Education of a “Race Man”
3. Fraternalist, Entrepreneur, Planter, And Segregation-Era Pragmatist
4. A “Modern Moses” For Civil Rights in Mississippi
5. “The Most Hated, And Best Loved, Man in Mississippi
6. “Hell to Pay in Mississippi” / The Murder of Emmett Till
7. “Time Bomb” / Howard, J. Edgar Hoover, And the Emmett Till Mystery
8. Taking on The Machine in Chicago / A Republican Campaign for Congress
9. Triumph and Tragedy / The Friendship Medical Center

AFTERWORD / David & Linda Beito

Notes

Index

About the Author

 

Editorial Reviews

"T.R.M. Howard was a towering freedom fighter. Too often forgotten! The powerful and insightful book, T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, corrects the historical record and keeps his precious memory fresh for us!”
—Cornel R. West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard Divinity School; Class of 1943 University Professor Emeritus, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

“T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer fills a gap. Too often today we conflate the civil rights movement with the legend of Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact there were countless others who fought for racial justice within an indifferent—and often hostile—society. This is the richly detailed story of one such man. T.R.M. Howard, in both his heroism and his human contradictions, is a human face on America’s greatest freedom movement. And, quite beyond its historical importance, this book is a gripping and moving read.”
—Shelby Steele, Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; author, The Content of Our Character, A Dream Deferred, White Guilt, and Shame

“In the 15 or so years of the civil-rights movement, no incident evoked more outrage than the torture and killing of Emmett Till, the spirited 14-year-old who left Chicago in August 1955 to visit relatives in Mississippi. One afternoon in a general store, Till committed the fatal sin of smarting off (jokingly) to a white woman. His cousins hustled him away, but two nights later a knock at the door sounded. Menacing white men loomed, and as Till’s great-uncle pleaded they marched in and hauled him away. A few days later, Till’s body surfaced in the Tallahatchie River, a cotton-gin fan-wheel wrapped around him with barbed wire. The murder brought national disgust upon Mississippi. Especially after thousands of mourners viewed Till’s open casket and noted the barbarities wrought upon the boy. . . . One of them was T.R.M. Howard, physician, landowner, activist, orator, and the subject of T.R.M. Howard, a compelling biography by David T. Beito and his wife Linda Royster Beito. T.R.M. Howard is a necessary biography, too: Howard played an important part in the Emmett Till story, and in the entire civil-rights are. He deserves to be better known. . . . Three months after the Till murder, he lectured in a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., the guest of 26-year-old pastor Martin Luther King. He spoke of shootings, the FBI and a freedom march on Washington, D.C. One woman in the audience remembered years later Howard’s vivid description of the Till killing. Her name was Rosa Parks, and four days after Howard spoke she answered a Montgomery bus driver, ‘No.’” . . . He bought land, bred livestock, served on the board of a bank and advanced black enterprise on the premise that political power needed financial power. He led voter-registration drives, supported boycotts, and lobbied Washington for services and hospitals. . . . Famed civil-rights leader Medgar Evans was Howard’s protégé, as was (later) Jesse Jackson. . . . Howard drove Cadillacs and Buicks, wore fancy clothes and loved guns and big-game hunting. He praised free enterprise with a Booker T. Washington fervor, believing entrepreneurs to be better agents of change than activists. . . . A flamboyant Second Amendment, anti-communist capitalist doesn’t please journalists and historians searching for civil-rights martyrs. T.R.M. Howard, though, makes room for exactly such a figure, and rightly so. That Howard made an important contribution is unquestionable.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Dr. Howard was a history maker, and this book brings him to life as a man of courage whose actions and views on civil rights shaped American history.”
—Juan A. Williams, Political Analyst, Fox News Channel; author, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965

“If there was a Mount Rushmore of civil rights icons, it would include Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and T.R.M. Howard. Howard was that important to the cause of civil rights. The powerful book, T.R.M. Howard, now brings to life this extraordinary figure in African-American history. Best known for his role in the civil rights movement, Howard was also a leading figure in African-American medicine, business, and social life. This is the story of Howard, but it is also the story of the black professionals and business people who contributed mightily to the cause of racial freedom. Readers will marvel at the life of Howard: a machine-gun toting advocate of protest and nonviolence who courted controversy within the movement and beyond. Based on the true story of Howard, the life and legend of the man could fill a Hollywood movie (or two). In the meantime, we have this magnificent biography to tell the story of larger-than-life figure, T.R.M. Howard.”
—Jonathan J. Bean, Professor of History, Southern Illinois University

“T.R.M. Howard’s wonderfully told story about an important personality sadly unknown to most students of the Civil Rights Movement is a more than welcome corrective. Dr. Howard’s life and accomplishments need to be better known!”
—Julian Bond, former Chairman, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

“T.R.M. Howard’s contributions to the civil rights movement are too often neglected by all but the most specialized of scholars. David T. and Linda Royster Beito’s magnificent biography, T.R.M. Howard, should finally bring Dr. Howard his due from Americans writ large. I applaud the Beitos for telling Dr. Howard’s story with such power, honesty, and dignity.”
—Scott Douglas Gerber, Professor of Law, Ohio Northern University; Associated Scholar, Brown University’s Political Theory Project; author, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas

“David T. Beito, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, and Linda Royster Beito, the chair of the department of social sciences at Stillman College, are the authors of T.R.M. Howard. Fifty-four years ago today, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy visiting family in Mississippi, was abducted, mutilated and slain after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Several days later, his horribly disfigured body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River. Many such tragedies had previously happened to black Americans and then been ignored. The Till case was different because of the efforts of a flamboyant and wealthy black planter and surgeon, T.R.M. Howard. Howard’s place in history has been woefully slighted. Without him, we might never have heard of Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers or Operation PUSH. Howard was the crucial link connecting the Till slaying and the rise of the modern civil rights movement. But he was an unlikely civil rights hero. A prosperous businessman who spared no expense on his wardrobe, sped around in expensive Cadillacs, gambled on horses, ran a successful hospital that provided affordable healthcare, hunted big game in Africa and owned a 1,000-acre plantation, Howard promoted an agenda of entrepreneurship and self-help. . . . Why isn’t this larger-than-life figure better known? Howard, a classically American “man on the make,” is hard to pigeonhole. His secular orientation and pro-business ideas made him an anomaly in a civil rights movement dominated by church leaders and left-liberal activists. Politically, his activities offer something to please and offend everybody: A staunch Republican and ally of President Eisenhower, Howard was also a committed feminist whose clinics offered safe abortions in the years before Roe vs. Wade. But those who knew T.R.M. Howard (who died in 1976 at age 68) still speak about his energy, charisma and commitment. ‘“The man was dynamic,’ recalled Mamie Till-Mobley. ‘I just thought he was the greatest in the world.’”
—Los Angeles Times

“It is my privilege and pleasure to have known and worked with Dr. Howard as he was pursuing the cause of civil rights in Mississippi with the same vim and vigor as it was being pursued in New York, Chicago, and other places. I was also afraid of him. This illuminating biography is a must read for anyone seeking to know more about the civil rights struggle in Mississippi in foregone years. Every acre was a drop of blood and every step was a tear.”
—Benjamin L. Hooks, former Executive Director, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

“T.R.M. Howard’s life was many things and its complexities and seeming paradoxes makes it especially important to get his story right. The great and admirable biography, T.R.M. Howard, displays the early Civil Rights era in all its messiness and grandeur. Howard was equal parts a business entrepreneur, a proponent of black self-help through fraternal societies, and a fearless national leader against racial injustice. To overlook Howard is to miss some important truths about the Civil Rights movement: its success was never guaranteed, it was a pick-up affair that relied on ingenuity and shrewd use of opportunities, and it depended at every turn on exceptional individuals like T.R.M. Howard.”
—Terence J. Pell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for Individual Rights; former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education

“The definitive work on the life of T.R.M. Howard. A fascinating narrative that illuminates important aspects of the African American experience in the twentieth century.”
—Adam Fairclough, Professor Emeritus of American History, Leiden University Institute for History; author, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000

“T.R.M. Howard is an engrossing, highly-informative book about one of the most astonishing figures in American history. It’s the story of a unique individual who is not just pivotal to the civil rights movement, but without whom many of the best known leaders of the movement may never have emerged. David and Linda Beito have authored a must-read for anyone interested in American history, civil rights, and colorful, larger-than-life characters. T.R.M. Howard is a meticulously researched, epic biography of one of the most fascinating personalities and consequential periods in American history. It’s an important contribution to America’s understanding of civil rights and the black experience in the United States.”
—Peter N. Kirsanow, Member, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; former Member, National Labor Relations Board; former Chair, The Center for New Black Leadership

“One of the best biographies I have read in years. It works both as a revisionist project, challenging our understanding of the nature of black leadership in the South, and as a reclamation project, bringing back into the discussion a colorful and important transitional figure who has received little notice from scholars.”
—Charles M. Payne, Jr., Frank P. Hixon Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago; author, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

“The biography, T.R.M. Howard, is an impressive account of the life and contributions of a neglected hero of the black civil-rights movement. As a doctor, entrepreneur, and activist, Howard risked his life for the betterment of others. I highly recommend this excellent book for anyone interested in learning about forgotten and neglected historical figures.”
—Carol M. Swain, retired Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University; Member, James Madison Society, Princeton University; author, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration, and other books

“T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer resurrects this important historical figure from undeserved obscurity. It also provides a window to observe the complexity of the southern civil rights movement.”
—Robert E. Weems, Jr., Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, Wichita State University

“Howard ‘consistently pushed an agenda of self-help, black business, and political equality whenever opportunities arose,’ write David T. Beito, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, and his wife Linda Royster Beito, a professor of social sciences at Stillman College, in their captivating and vividly detailed new biography, T.R.M. Howard. . . . Unlike other prominent civil rights leaders, though, Howard 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 maintained, ‘There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi today that real Jeffersonian democracy and the religion of Jesus Christ cannot solve.’ . . . No single individual brought down the South’s Jim Crow regime, but there were a few dozen who played essential parts. T.R.M. Howard convincingly elevates Howard to that rank. It also provocatively links Howard’s success to the controversial ideas of the 19th-century African-American leader Booker T. Washington, who had famously prioritized black economic independence over political liberty. . . . Indeed, one of the book’s most significant achievements is to highlight the indispensable role that black entrepreneurs and professionals played in the crucial early phase of the modern civil rights struggle. . . . For Howard, this focus on economic independence remained constant throughout his career. . . . Today, given the overwhelming attention that most historians have paid to King’s dazzling legacy, it’s easy to forget that fraternal societies and profit-minded entrepreneurs also led the fight for equal rights. With T.R.M. Howard, T.R.M. Howard’s achievements have finally received the attention they deserve.”
—Reason

“T.R.M. Howard was not everyone’s idea of a civil rights hero, and his accomplishments have been widely neglected. But as historians David Beito and Linda Royster Beito demonstrate in their book T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, he was in fact one of the most effective black civil rights leaders of his generation and a key figure in bringing civil rights to Mississippi and empowering black voters in Chicago.”
—Harper’s

“‘While historians have properly acknowledged the contributions of clergymen and grassroots activists’ to the civil-rights movement, write David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ‘they have too often neglected those made by entrepreneurs and black professionals.’ The Beitos’ new book—T.R.M. Howard—begins to set the record straight.”
—National Review

“T.R.M. Howard is the only biography of Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, whose remarkable life (1908–1976) combined entrepreneurship, medical practice, civil-rights activism against segregation, philanthropy, and high living. He was an irrepressible but flawed character, a man on the make who grew up under Jim Crow and took advantage of the few opportunities that system of repression left open. He then used his wealth and persuasive abilities to combat the system. Howard proved that freedom and capitalism were powerful weapons that could be used against bigotry. . . . The Beitos have written a timely and enlightening book. Howard was a fascinating man, and his belief that free enterprise offers poor people (of all races) the path to success needs to be trumpeted as loudly as ever. America today is torn by counterproductive governmental “affirmative action” policies such as quotas for “minority-owned” contractors and racial preferences in college admissions. The book’s subtext is that what government needs to do to help poor people and minorities is to get out of their way.”
—The Freeman

“Fame is fleeting, and those who during their lifetime attain the debatable benefits of public acclaim will often, upon their death, have their memory entombed with them. Such is the case with T.R.M. Howard, who for a time was one of America’s most widely known, colorful, and respected civil rights pioneers. The husband and wife team of David and Linda Beito have labored nearly a decade to write a biography, T.R.M. Howard, in hopes that they can raise the man’s memory from the grave. The book was worth the wait. Well-written and deeply researched, the authors immerse the reader into Dr. Howard’s world, one that crossed paths with a litany of American greats such as MLK, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Jesse Owens. Four days after seeing Dr. Howard give an impassioned speech at MLK’s Baptist Church, Rosa Parks took her famous stand against Jim Crow. She insisted that it was the thought of Emmett Till, who’s lynching was the subject of Dr. Howard’s speech, which spurred her to refuse to give up her bus seat. . . . Throughout the book, Mr. and Mrs. Beito do a sparkling job bringing to life Dr. Howard, his energy, his flamboyance and his personal bravery in battling to establish the rule of law in the South. But that is not all that recommends this work. . . . I have rarely put a book down so I could rise out of my seat and give it a standing ovation, but after that passage I couldn’t help myself. . . . By bringing the man so clearly into focus, warts and all, this finely written, incredibly important biography will do more to push Dr. Howard further into the background than to earn him the recognition he so richly deserves. Dr. Howard will remain largely forgotten, despite, and ironically because of, this spirited and engaging biography.”
—Daily Kos

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