Despite many disadvantages as a youth, John Miller Howard managed to become a dedicated role model for many young individuals in the Deep South. He demonstrated an early interest in art, was encouraged by his single mother, and copied cartoons and newspaper photographs as his segregated school had no art program. When he began his career as a teacher, many of his students had similar rural backgrounds. He believed his job was “to pull from students their deep rooted and hidden talents. … It took a constant struggle to awake some; others met the challenge with ease.”
Howard was born in Alcorn, Mississippi, not far from the Mississippi River north of Natchez. He spent most of his childhood in Brookhaven, Mississippi, south of Jackson, the state capitol. Howard returned to his birthplace to attend Alcorn College (now Alcorn University), the oldest public historically Black land grant institution in the United States; it was founded in 1871. Although it did not offer classes in art, Howard managed: “Alcorn had no art, but I kept on painting. I did the walls in my dormitory, cartoons for the newspaper, and drawings for biology students.” He also played on Alcorn’s baseball team and for a while played minor league ball.
After college Howard served as principal of the segregated school in rural Toomsuba, Mississippi, and in addition to his administrative duties he was a quasi-public health officer for the community and built outhouses, sought sources of clean drinking water, and lectured on preventing disease. In 1936 he moved on to T.J. Harris High School in Meridian, Mississippi, where his skills were recognized by the state education director who provided him with a scholarship for summer study at Atlanta University—called by some the École des Beaux Arts of the Black South. While there Howard encountered Hale Woodruff who befriended him and in 1937 offered his young protégé a scholarship and a position teaching in the university’s laboratory school.
Two years later, in 1939, the Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff) recruited Howard as the institution’s first art instructor. Initially he had only four students. He spent 1948/1949 in New York where he obtained a master’s degree in education. Over time Howard built up the art department, which by 1950 offered a major, and eventually, in 1967, got its own building thanks to Howard’s persistence. He assumed additional administrative duties as director of public relations and created floats for student parades at the university. He also held positions at the state level: serving on the Arkansas Advisory Council on Secondary Education and on the Arkansas Arts, Culture and Humanities Council.
Howard did not neglect his own work which ranged from moody scenes of his depressed environment (including an “old house series”) to more colorful and modernist still lifes, and even an occasional abstraction. In 2022 the university where he had labored so hard mounted a retrospective; the concluding sentence in the catalogue stated: “His legacy lives on in those who follow in his footsteps, railing against racial and economic barriers to provide access to the arts and make a life filled with meaning.”