Emily Howland

Emily Howland (November 20, 1827 – June 29, 1929) was a philanthropist, humanitarian, and educator. She supported the education of African-Americans. She was also a strong supporter of women's rights and the temperance movement. Howland personally financed the education of many black students and contributed to institutions such as the Tuskegee Institute, Henry Damon Davidson's Centerville Industrial Institute, and Kowaliga Institute in Kowaliga, Alabama, where Howland Hall was named for her.

Early life and education Emily Howland was born at Sherwood in Cayuga County, New York, on November 20, 1827.

Career An active abolitionist, Howland taught at Normal School for Colored Girls (later known as the Miner School and now University of the District of Columbia) in Washington, D.C., from 1857 to 1859. During the Civil War, she worked at the contraband refugee settlement of Camp Todd in Arlington, Virginia, establishing a school where she taught freed slaves to read and write as well as administering to the sick during a smallpox outbreak, coordinating relief efforts, and ultimately serving as director of the camp from 1864 to 1866.

Beginning in 1867, she started a community for freed people in Heathsville, Northumberland County, Virginia, called Arcadia, on 400 acres purchased by her father, including a school for the education of children of freed slaves, the Howland Chapel School. She continued to maintain an active interest in African-American education, donating money and materials as well as visiting and corresponding with administrators at many schools. When the suffrage movement split into two groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, Howland did not take sides, but attended meetings of both groups. In 1904, she spoke in front of Congress and attended the 1912 and 1913 suffrage parades in New York.

Howland became one of the first female directors of a national bank in the United States, at the First National Bank of Aurora in Aurora, New York, in 1890, serving until her death, at age 101.

Legacy Her papers are held by several universities, including Cornell University, Haverford College, A photo album containing family, friends, and colleagues, as well as souvenir images of notable abolitionists and famous figures during the 1860s and 1870s is jointly owned by the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Library of Congress. In 2021, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.