Charles Howard Sr.
*This date celebrates the birth of Charles P. Howard Sr., a Black soldier, attorney, and columnist, in 1890.
He was born in Des Moines and graduated from the Fort Des Moines officer-candidate school in 1917. One year later, he was a second lieutenant serving with the 92nd Division, 366th Infantry in France during World War I. After the military, Howard received his law degree from Drake University in 1920. He was a gifted lawyer who never lost a capital trial.
Howard co-founded the National Bar Association in 1925, was an Iowa Bystander columnist in the 1920s and 1930s, and later published the Iowa Observer newspaper in 1939. He was a friend of entertainer Paul Robeson, and in 1948, he keynoted the Progressive Party National Convention. Two years later, after attending the Communist-sponsored World Peace Congress in Warsaw, Poland, Howard returned to Iowa, the target of intense criticism, and was disbarred in 1951.
He served as the National Negro Press correspondent at the United Nations until his death. He is considered by many as Iowa's most colorful journalist of all time. Charles P. Howard Sr. died in 1969.
