The Howard County Junior College District Board of Trustees passed a resolution celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education at its meeting on January 26, 2004.

While the resolution recognized this 50^th anniversary of the landmark case, it also celebrated the fact that the Trustees of Howard College adopted a resolution on August 30, 1951, admitting “all qualified applicants regardless of race, creed, or color,” three years before the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.

Howard College was established in November of 1945.  A member of the original Board of Trustees, Dr. P.W. Malone, was serving as President of the Board in 1951.

Dr. Malone remembered a woman who worked for him was concerned because her son would not be able to attend college. He would have to leave home to attend a college for blacks, and the cost was too great.

Dr. Malone knew the young man was bright and talented. He said that it “just seemed wrong to deny this young man the opportunity to go to college when there was a college right here in town.”

So the Board went to work and passed the resolution. The 1951 resolution stated that “it has come to the attention of the Board that there are qualified students in the community of the negro race who desire to enter Howard County Junior College.”

Although the Board discussed the resolution before passing it, there was little fanfare or comment afterward with the exception of a letter from a group of local pastors, expressing “gratitude and appreciation for making it possible for our youth, and those who desire, to continue and further their education here at home.”

Dr. Malone continued to serve on the Board of Trustees for Howard College until his death on January 26, 1998, so the passing of the 2004 resolution marked the sixth anniversary of his death.

The members of the 1951 Board of Trustees along with Dr. Malone were Horace Garrett, Leroy Echols, L.H. Thomas, and Charles M. Adams.  E.C. Dodd was the president of the college.

Current Board members are Dr. Charles Warren, Harold Davis, Don McKinney, Marie Ethridge, Michael Flores, Adrian Rnadle, and John Freeman. Dr. Cheryl T. Sparks is the president of the college.