Joan Imogen Howard

Joan Imogen Howard, was born in Boston in 1848, though both 1850 and 1851 have also been mentioned.{{sfn|Dorman|1998|p=151}} Her father, Edwin Frederick Howard, was a well-known citizen of that city, and her mother, Joan Louise Turpin Howard, was a native of New York. She had one sister, Adeline Turpin Howard, the principal of the Wormley School, Washington, D. C., and one brother, Edwin C. J. T. Howard, M. D., the first African American graduate of Harvard Medical School,{{sfn|Powell|2000|p=307}} and a prominent physician in Philadelphia.{{sfn|Scruggs|1893|p=156-58}} She was a cousin of the well-known elocutionist, Ednorah Nahar.{{sfn|Majors|1893|p=244}}

She graduated from the Wells Grammar School, Blossom Street, Boston, as one of ten honor pupils who received silver medals. Her parents encouraged her to pursue a higher course of instruction, and consequently, after a successful entrance examination, she became a student of the Girls' High and Normal School, as it was then called. She was the first African American women to enter, and after a three years' course, to graduate from this, which was, at that time, the highest institution of learning in Boston.{{sfn|Scruggs|1893|p=156-58}}

A situation as an assistant teacher in Colored Grammar School No. 4, later Grammar School No. 81, was immediately offered. For several years an evening school, which was largely attended and of which she was principal, was carried on in the same building. Later, she took a course in “Methods of Instruction” at the Saturday sessions of the Normal College of New York City, receiving a Master of Arts diploma from this institution (1877). In 1892, she received the degree of Master of Pedagogy at the University of the City of New York. She held a special position on the Board of Women Managers of the State of New York for the Columbian Exposition, one of five of the Committee on Education.{{sfn|Scruggs|1893|p=156-58}}

She was first Superintendent and a member of the board of directors of Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia.[https://findingaids.library.upenn.edu/records/UPENN_BATES_PU-N.MC78 Nurses. Miss J. Imogene Howard, first Superintendent and Board of Directors at Mercy Hospital, seated right. Box 22. Photos 33 and 33a.] Mercy-Douglass Hospital records, Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved April 19. 2025. In addition, she presided over the J. Imogen Howard Club of Mercy Hospital.[https://www.masshist.org/database/5972ft=Collection%20Guides&from=/collection-guides/view/fap081 J. Imogen Howard Club of Mercy Hospital Photograph, circa 1925-1930. Image: 20.4 cm x 25.3 cm. From the DeGrasse-Howard photographs. Photo. 36.1.] Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved April 19, 2025.

{{reflist}}

• {{Source-attribution|L. A. Scruggs' Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character (1893)}}

• {{cite book|last=Dorman|first=Franklin A.|title=Twenty families of color in Massachusetts: 1742-1998|url=https://archive.org/details/twentyfamiliesof00dorm|url-access=registration|date=1 June 1998|publisher=New England Historic Genealogical Society|isbn=978-0-88082-077-6}}
• {{cite book|last=Majors|first=Monroe A.|title=Noted Negro women, their triumphs and activities|url=https://archive.org/stream/27056814.4698.emory.edu/27056814_4698#page/n250/mode/1up/search/ednorah+nahar|edition=Reprint 1971 by Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press|year=1893|publisher=Donohue and Henneberry|location=Chicago, Illinois|isbn=0-8369-8733-0}}
• {{cite book|last=Powell|first=William S.|title=Dictionary of North Carolina Biography: Vol. 5, P-S|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VeSDB5tKDagC&pg=PA307|date=9 November 2000|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6700-6}}
• {{cite book|last=Robinson|first=Cedric J.|title=Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before World War II|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EI2Ke6bmX8oC&pg=PA76|date=1 September 2012|publisher=University of North Carolina Press Books|isbn=978-1-4696-0675-0}}
• {{cite book|last=Scruggs|first=Lawson Andrew|title=Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character|url=https://archive.org/details/womenofdistincti00scru|page=[https://archive.org/details/womenofdistincti00scru/page/156 156]|edition=Public domain|year=1893|publisher=L. A. Scruggs}}
• {{cite book|last1=Wells-Barnett|first1=Ida B.|last2=Rydell|first2=Robert W.|title=The Reason why the Colored American is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jEnhsdRlFB4C&pg=PR18|edition=Public domain|year=1893|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06784-6}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Howard, Joan Imogen}}

Category:1848 births

Category:1937 deaths

Category:Educators from Boston

Category:19th-century American educators

Category:Educators from Massachusetts

Category:African-American women educators

Category:19th-century American women educators

Category:20th-century African-American educators

Category:20th-century African-American women

Category:19th-century African-American educators