Joan Louise Turpin Howard

Photo: The Colored American Magazine (July 1902)

The Howards were among several socially prominent free black families living in the city's affluent West End in the 1850s. Mrs. Howard and her husband, Edward Frederick Howard (1813-1893), were active in the anti-slavery movement and fought to end segregation of Massachusetts public schools in 1855. Their two daughters, Adeline (b. 1845) and Joan Imogene (b. 1850), became distinguished educators, while their son, Edwin Clarence (1846-1912), was the first African American graduate of Harvard Medical School. [Smithsonian]


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