Edwin C. J. T. Howard

Edwin C. J. T. Howard (Edwin Clarence Joseph Turpin Howard (October 21, 1846 – May 10, 1912) was an American physician and one of the first black graduates of Harvard Medical School in 1869. After graduating from Harvard, Dr. Howard worked in Charleston, South Carolina, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he played a role in establishing the first two hospitals for black patients, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School His father, Edwin Frederick Howard, He had two sisters: Adeline Turpin Howard (1844-1922) Ednorah Nahar and Georgenia Cordelia DeGrasse He did not receive a degree from Liberia College. He was a Harvard Medical School student in the summer of 1866, In 1869, he graduated from Harvard Medical School. Records indicate that he had a “zero patient mortality rate” during the epidemic. the first hospital for black patients and doctors in Philadelphia. he worked with a group of fellow physicians to establish Mercy Hospital, the second black-managed medical institution in Philadelphia.

He was one of eight black men commissioned into the United Medical Corps of Sigma Pi Phi, the first and oldest black Greek fraternity in the United States.

He was a president and member of the Citizens Republican Club. Howard’s diaries are part of the DeGrasse-Howard papers collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society.