Perry Wilbon Howard

Biography

Howard was born in Ebenezer in Holmes County in central Mississippi on June 14, 1877, to Sallie (1842-?) and Perry Wilbon Howard (1835-1907), who were enslaved before the Civil War. Highly respected in the community, they bought their own farm land and sent all their seven sons to college. Howard also had a sister Sarah, who later followed him to Washington, DC, as did at least one of his brothers. He was described as mulatto, meaning mixed race with partial European ancestry, as were many African Americans.

The first son, Howard graduated from the historically black Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi and then studied mathematics at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He studied law at Illinois College of Law in Chicago. By 1905, Howard had passed the bar, become a member of the Mississippi Bar Association, and was practicing law in the state capital of Jackson. He was among not more than two dozen black lawyers in Mississippi, the second generation of these professional men.

He married in Jackson and had a son, Perry Wilbon Howard, III (1912–1967). Howard III was working as a bondsman in Washington, DC at the time of his death.

Howard became active in Republican Party politics despite the constraints of Mississippi life; most blacks in the state had been disenfranchised in 1890 when the white Democrats passed a new constitution with provisions that suppressed voter registration, such as poll taxes and a literacy test. Howard served as a delegate to every Republican national convention from 1912 to 1960, the year before his death. He was chosen by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 to second his nomination as presidential candidate.

Like other aspiring lawyers, Howard left Mississippi for better opportunities, moving to Washington, D.C. He became a partner in the top black law firm in Washington, Howard, Hayes and Davis (later Cobb, Hayes and Howard).

Howard defeated white Republicans to be elected as National Committeeman from Mississippi in 1924, becoming the first black on the Republican National Committee in 25 years. In Mississippi, under white supremacy and the one-party Democratic rule enforced by black disenfranchisement, party members could do little more than manage patronage, the assignment of federal appointed offices at the state level. In 1924 Howard was also appointed by President Warren G. Harding as a special assistant to the US Attorney General, becoming the highest-paid black in the government and Harding's first black appointment. Although Howard lived and worked in Washington, DC for the rest of his life, he retained his office as Republican National Committeeman of Mississippi and control of its patronage appointments in the state. In other southern states, conservative whites began to take over the Republican Party beginning in the mid-20th century.

In 1928, Howard was indicted by a federal grand jury in Mississippi on corruption charges related to purported sale of offices in Mississippi. The grand jury would have been made up of white Democrats, his political opponents; blacks had been largely disenfranchised since 1890 and, excluded as voters, were not allowed to serve on juries. Howard and other black Republican officials were tried in federal court in Jackson. Howard said his "lily white" opponents in the Republican Party, which had fierce internal conflicts and no electoral power, were trying to destroy him as a black leader. Coming after years of investigation and the Harding scandals, the Howard case attracted coverage from such national newspapers as the New York Times.

Howard was suspended from his position in the Department of Justice under President Calvin Coolidge before the first trial. Herbert Hoover, who had been elected as president during the machinations of investigation and indictment, was considered interested in cleaning up corruption but also in appealing to southern whites. Many people believed that he allowed the prosecution of Howard in order to attract whites to the Republican Party, as many appealed to him to reduce the black influence. The "specter of white Republicanism" so alarmed the Democrats as threatening their dominance politically in the state that figures such as Governor Theodore Gilmore Bilbo and Colonel Frederick Sullens, editor of the Jackson Daily News, spoke out in Howard's defense.

Howard was twice acquitted on patronage corruption charges by all-white juries in Jackson and Meridian. In the first trial, the defense noted that Howard had given more than 90% of the patronage jobs at his command to Democrats. During the trials and before jury selection was complete, Sullens published stories about the threat of a white Republican party to the Democrats. The Department of Justice decided not to try another case. Howard resigned from the government but returned to live and work in Washington, DC, where he was influential in the Republican Party. President Hoover, however, recognized only his "lily-white rival" Lamont Rowlands of the Mississippi party during the rest of his term.

Despite opposition within Mississippi and criticism from national black leaders, Howard was pragmatic about dealing with local conditions. He held onto his position until 1960 as Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi while working and living in the capital. He led U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft's Southern delegation at the 1952 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Taft, however, lost the party nomination to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1956, the Howard forces (long called the "Blacks and Tans" for their biracial character) began to be challenged anew for control of the Mississippi state party by a white conservative faction led by Wirt Yerger, an insurance agent in Jackson. In addition to the Yerger and Howard factions, two smaller groups contended for intra-party power. The Lily-White Movement was led by George L. Sheldon, a former governor of Nebraska who had run for governor of Mississippi in 1947, polling 2.5 percent of the vote. The conservative "Democrats for Eisenhower" were organized under E. O. Spencer.

Some media incorrectly identified Yerger as the head of the "Lily Whites", rather than the leader of a new group of conservative businesspeople and lawyers, many of whom had earlier been in the Young Republicans organization. Yerger is considered the "founding father" of the state GOP. But it was decades before the Republican Party gathered strength among whites and acquired majority status among white registered voters in Mississippi.

Howard managed to survive political swings and continued to serve as the Republican National Committeeman almost until his death. He died on February 1, 1961. His namesake son survived him.

Serving with Howard as the national Republican committeewoman from 1924 to 1948 was Mary Booze of Mound Bayou, an all-black community in Bolivar County in northwestern Mississippi. She was the first African-American female to sit on the RNC.