Edwin Howard
*Edwin Howard was born on this date in 1846. He was a Black doctor and medical administrator.
Born in Boston, MA., Edwin C.J.T. Howard's parents were Edwin Howard and Joanna Turpin. He was the brother of educator Joan Imogen Howard. He attended Boston Latin School from 1861 to 1865. He studied at Liberia College in Monrovia, Liberia, under Dr. Charles B. Dunbar. He returned to study at Boston City Hospital and then Harvard Medical College.
Howard graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1869 as the first African American. His thesis was on Puerperal fever. After graduation, Howard practiced medicine in Charleston, South Carolina, and then in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was instrumental in establishing the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital in 1895. Howard was one of eight African American men commissioned into the United States Medical Corps and served with the 12th Infantry Regiment in Pennsylvania, rising to the ranks of major and surgeon general.
In 1904, Howard co-founded Sigma Pi Phi with other friends in the medical profession. He also established the Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia in 1905 and the Sigma Pi Phi Society, the first Black fraternity in the United States. Howard died of diabetes on May 10, 1912, in his home in Philadelphia.
