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African American Heritage Trail, Washington DC
Howard University
Sixth Street and Howard Place, NW
Howard University, one of the oldest Black colleges in the United States, was established by Congress in 1866 to educate formerly enslaved individuals. Its name honors Freedman's Bureau Commissioner General Oliver Otis Howard, a member of the white First Congregational Society of Washington, D.C., which originally conceived of the school as a theological seminary to train black ministers. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, who became president in 1926, shaped Howard into a modern institution. The university incubated many of the civil rights successes of the 19th and 20th centuries, and its alumni roster reads like a Who's Who of African Americans. |