One of the entertainers was Mahalia Jackson. Charles Diggs of Michigan and NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall. Sometimes as many as ten thousand attended including such future activists as Fannie Lou Hamer. The RCNL organized yearly rallies in Mound Bayou for civil rights. The RCNL mounted a successful boycott against service stations that denied restrooms to blacks and distributed twenty thousand bumper stickers with the slogan,"Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." His compatriots in the League included Medgar Evers, who Howard had hired as an agent for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard rose to prominence as a civil rights leader after founding the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in 1951. In 1947, he broke with the Knights and Daughters, organized the rival United Order of Friendship, and opened the Friendship Clinic. He also built a small zoo and a park as well as the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. While there, he founded an insurance company, restaurant, hospital, home construction firm, and a large farm where he raised cattle, quail, hunting dogs, and cotton. In 1942, Several years after getting his medical degree at Loma Linda University, Howard took over as the first chief surgeon at the hospital of the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization, in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Despite his SDA roots, he promoted the legalization of prostitution. His columns promoted black business, self-help, and attacked efforts to impose segregation in the city. While attending medical school at Loma Linda University in Los Angeles, he was a regular columnist for the main black newspaper, the California Eagle. Howard later showed his gratitude by adding Mason as one of his middle names. He put him to work in his hospital and eventually paid for much of his medical education. Mason took note of the boy’s work habits, talent, ambition, and charm. His parents were tobacco twisters and his mother was a cook for Will Mason, a prominent local white doctor and member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA). Howard was born in the town of Murray, Kentucky. He was also president of the National Medical Association, the black counterpart of the AMA. He was a mentor to Medgar Evers and played prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. His hospital in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi gave low-cost health care to thousands of poor blacks.ĭuring the early 1950s, he led the largest civil rights/pro-self help civil rights organization in Mississippi. His investments included an insurance company, home construction firm, cotton plantation, and small zoo. He rose from poverty to become one of the wealthiest blacks in Mississippi. He made his mark whether it was in business, voluntary mutual aid, or politics. Howard ( pictured fourth from the left during the Emmett Till trial) died thirty years ago on this date.
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