Panel on T.R.M. Howard (Mentor to Medgar Evers/Fannie Lou Hamer

Details:
This panel will focus on the book, "Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Liberty and Economic Power" (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009) by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito.  For more on the book itself, click here.

Dr. T.R.M. Howard was the civil rights mentor (and first employer) of Medgar Evers and was instrumental in finding witnesses and evidence in the Emmett Till case.   He was one of the wealthiest blacks and the state and the chief surgeon at the leading black fraternal, which was owned by a mutual aid organization and provided low-cost health care.   He also played a critical role in introducing Fannie Lou Hamer to civil rights.

In 1956, Howard moved to Chicago where he ran for Congress and founded the largest black-owned medical center in Chicago.  Operation PUSH was founded in his basement!