Graduated Harvard Medical Class of 1869
Edwin C.J.T. Howard was born in Boston on October 21, 1846, and attended Boston Latin School. He studied at Liberia College in Monrovia, Liberia from 1861 to 1865 and under Dr. Charles B. Dunbar. He returned to Boston and his name appears in the “Catalogue of Students Attending the 1866 Summer Session.” Howard graduated in 1869; his thesis was on Puerperal Fever. After graduation, Howard entered the practice of medicine in Charleston, South Carolina and then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was instrumental in establishing the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital in 1895. He was also instrumental in establishing the Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia in 1905 and the Sigma Pi Phi Society, the first Black fraternity in the United States. Howard died of diabetes on May 10, 1912 in his home in Philadelphia.