“A Communist Under Every Bed”
“A Communist Under Every Bed”
In August 1956, Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a physician and voting rights activist from Mississippi, left the state forever with his wife and resettled on Chicago’s South Side. There, he became president of the National (the Negro) Medical Association and shifted his allegiance to the Republican Party after twenty-five years as a Democrat. In 1958, Howard ran but lost against Democratic Congressman William Dawson for the latter’s House seat. By the time of his death in 1976, he remained a major figure in South Side Chicago politics, medical care, and civil rights movement. As an outspoken proponent of civil rights and equal opportunity for blacks, Howard got the ire of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI also had a dispute with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and conducted an investigation of the author, a reporter for the black-owned magazine Jet, because his Baptist minister father was allegedly a “pro-Communist.” Jet continued to publish stories of the war between Hoover and civil rights activists.
Keywords: civil rights movement, T. R. M. Howard, Chicago, Republican Party, politics, blacks, Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King Jr., Jet
University Press of Mississippi requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
