Oscar Howard
Oscar Howard was born on this date in 1914. He was a Black businessman, activist, and minister.
Oscar C. Howard was one of 5 boys and two girls born to Randall and Maria Howard in Rochelle, GA. Young Howard grew up on a sharecropper's farm but ran away when he was young. Inspired by the then-president of Fort Valley College in Georgia, Howard graduated from high school in 1942. After graduating from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Howard’s business career began during the Korean War, when he started operating a food service business at the Twin Cities arsenal near Minneapolis, MN.
In 1956, he opened his own business, Howard’s Catering Co., which managed cafeterias in several industrial complexes in Minnesota. In the mid-1960s, Howard participated in the “War on Poverty” program, which provided home-delivered meals to elderly residents in the inner cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul; some 62,000 were served during that summer. Soon after, Howard started a non-profit minority entrepreneurial program called the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA). He published his biography, Oscar C. Howard: Master of Challenges, in 1974
Howard retired in the 1980s and began working more in public service. He served on the boards of the American Red Cross, the Minneapolis YWCA, and Metropolitan State University. He was also the first Black member of the Minneapolis Athletic Club. He also worked with various agencies, including the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches, Salvation Army, Junior Achievement, and others. Howard was an ordained minister and a deacon at Zion Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He was on the board of trustees of the United Theological Seminary and founded Kwanzaa Community Presbyterian Church.
Oscar Howard, who had been married for over 26 years and was the father of four children, died on November 3, 2003.
