Qualla: Howard University

Howard University: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. Toni Morrison studied here. So did Thurgood Marshall, Vernon Jordan, Stokely Carmichael, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kamala Harris, and Zora Neale Hurston. The Howard University campus on Georgia Avenue NW in Washington, the institution alumni and students call simply the Mecca, has produced more Black American doctors, lawyers, and Ph.D. holders than any other single institution in the country over the past 160 years. Howard was federally chartered in March 1867, just two months after the founding of the Freedmen's Bureau hospital that became its medical center, and one year after a Civil War-era Congregational meeting decided that the recently emancipated Black population of the United States needed access to higher education. The university that grew up around that decision is now the only historically Black college or university classified by the Carnegie Foundation as an R1 doctoral research institution.

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Howard University: From Freedmen's Bureau

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HaloMasterMind, CC BY-SA 4.0. Howard's founding emerged directly from Reconstruction. A group of Congregationalist ministers in Washington proposed in 1866 to establish a theological seminary to train Black ministers. By the time the charter was drafted and submitted to Congress, the proposal had grown into a...

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Image: HaloMasterMind | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University: Mordecai Johnson and the Modern University

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Alston, Public domain. By the 1920s Howard had stalled. It was still a respectable institution but had not kept pace with the growing demands placed on Black higher education by the migration of African Americans to cities and by the rise of professional licensing requirements. In 1926 Howard's board h...

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Image: Charles Alston | Public domain

Howard University: The Strategy for Brown

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nohop, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles Hamilton Houston came to Howard's law school as vice dean in 1929 and took it from a part-time night program to a fully accredited institution with the explicit mission of training a Black bar capable of dismantling segregation. Houston taught Thurgood Marshall, Spottswoo...

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Image: Nohop | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University: Stokely and Toni

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eduardo Montes-Bradley, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the 1960s Howard had become a center of the Black student movement that would help reshape American politics. Stokely Carmichael graduated in 1964 and immediately joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where he served as chairman during the period when SNCC made...

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Image: Eduardo Montes-Bradley | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University: Today

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RaEdits, CC BY-SA 4.0. Howard now enrolls about ten thousand students from across the United States and from more than a hundred countries. The university operates twelve schools and colleges including medicine, dentistry, law, business, divinity, communications, engineering, and pharmacy. The Howard U...

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Image: RaEdits | CC BY-SA 4.0