No single individual brought down the South’s Jim Crow regime, but there were a few dozen who played essential parts. Black Maverick convincingly elevates Howard to that rank. . . One of the book’s most significant achievements is to highlight the indispensable role that black entrepreneurs and professionals played in the crucial early phase of the modern civil rights struggle.

Fortunately, several online audio and video clips are now available which reveal Howard’s compelling oratory. Particularly effective is this audio clip of Howard’s speech (courtesy of Schomburg Center of The New York Public Library) to a mass civil rights rally in Madison Square Garden in 1956. The person who introduces him is none other than A. Philip Randolph, the head of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

And, here is a moving clip (Courtesy of Pacifica Radio Archives) of Howard’s eulogy at Medgar Evers’s memorial service in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Finally, a video clip (courtesy of MacDonald and Associates) of an interview from 1956.