CHAPTER XXXIII.
HOWARD UNIVERSITY.
Howard University was established by a special act of Congress in 1867. It takes its name from that of the great philanthropist and soldier, Gen. O. O. Howard, who may be called its founder and greatest patron. It was through the untiring efforts of General Howard that this special act passed Congress to establish a university on such broad and liberal lines as those that characterize Howard University.
This University admits students of both sexes and any color to all of its departments. The great majority of its students, however, are colored, and some of its graduates are the most distinguished men of the Negro race in America. It has splendid departments of law, medicine, theology and the arts and sciences.
Howard University is situated on one of the most beautiful sites of the Capital of the Nation.
Having two members of my family as teachers in the public schools of Washington City, I have learned considerable about them. They are said to rank among our best public schools, and are constantly improving, under the careful supervision of a highly competent superintendent, and a paid board of trustees. There are 112 school buildings in the city—75 for white and 37 for colored, the number being regulated according to population, about one-third being colored. New manual training schools have just been erected, for both races, and a growing disposition exists to provide equal (though separate) accommodation and opportunity. The colored schools are taught exclusively by colored teachers, the grade schools being conducted by the graduates of the Washington Normal School almost entirely. The M Street High School, a leading sample of the best public schools of the country, has a teaching faculty of twenty teachers, most of them graduates of our best colleges, such as Howard, Yale, Oberlin, University of Michigan, Amherst, Brown and Cornell.
R. H. Terrill, the present principal, is a graduate of Howard, with the degree of "Cum laude," and, after having won golden opinions from the board and attaches of the school for his scholarship and supervising ability, has been appointed by President Roosevelt to a judgeship of the District, and will assume the duties thereof in January, 1902.
JUDGE ROBERT H. TERRILL.