Civil Rights leader T.R.M. Howard has been overlooked as a force in the modern civil rights movement. He was a wealthy, black, republican businessman and major property owner in Mississippi who supported the activities of Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Medgar Evers. It was the brutal murder of 14 year-old Emmet Till that "moved Howard to even greater efforts". He gave a speech at on Nov 27, 1955 at the Dexter Avenue Baptist church of M.L. King Jr; Rosa Parks was in the audience. It was four days later that Parks decided to keep her seat on the bus in Montgomery. She was supposedly thinking of Emmet Till when she remained seated. (Many other sources said "she was just tired from a long day of work"). Howard was a "staunch republican and ally of Eisenhower...a committed feminist whose clinics offered safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade".
(Source: "Unsung hero of civil righs movement" by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, both college professors in Alabama. In The Virginian Pilot on 9/6/09)
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