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Finding Aid to the Edward Howden Papers,
1905-2017
(bulk 1944-1985),
SFH 731
SFH 731
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Table of contents
Title: Edward Howden Papers
Date (inclusive): 1905-2017
Date (bulk): 1944-1985
Identifier/Call Number: SFH 731
Creator:
Howden, Edward W. (Edward Watson), 1918-2018
Physical Description:
4 cartons, 2 manuscripts boxes, 2 flat boxes, 1 oversized flat box
(6.5 cubic feet)
Contributing Institution:
San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Abstract: Collection documents Edward Howden's lifelong efforts to fight bias and end discrimination in employment, housing, and other
matters by working for what he preferred to call human rights.
Physical Location: The collection is stored on site.
Language of Material: Collection materials are in English.
The collection is available for use during San Francisco History Center hours.
All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the City Archivist. Permission
for publication is given on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library as the owner of the physical items.
[Identification of item], Edward Howden Papers, (SFH 731), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
Donated by Edward W. Howden in 2013, with additional gifts made in each successive year through 2017.
Existence and Location of Originals
Edward Howden: Ed Howden and the Rise of Civil Rights Advocacy in Governmental Institutions
conducted by Martin Meeker in 2016-2017, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2017.
Ed Howden Oral History by Michael Semler conducted May 25, 2010.
Oral history on Howden's work with the U.S. Community Relations Service conducted July 12, 1999 by the University of Colorado,
Boulder:
The Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project; see https://www.civilrightsmediation.org/interviews/Edward_Howden.shtml.
The Color of America Has Changed, How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978,
Brilliant, Mark, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Cottrell Laurence Dellums Papers, BANC MSS 72/132 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley.
Charles J. Patterson,
Working for Civic Unity in Government, Business, and Philanthropy,
an oral history conducted in 1991 by Gabrielle Morris, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1994.
William Byron Rumford Papers, BANC MSS 73/112 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Tarea Hall Pittman Papers, BANC MSS 75/56 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley.
Catherine Bauer Wurster papers, BANC MSS 74/163c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
California Federation for Civic Unity Records, BANC MSS C-A 274, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley.
Records of the Community Relations Service, Significant Case Files, 1974-1994, Record Group 379, National Archives.
Processed by Tami J. Suzuki in 2023.
Biographical and Historical Notes
Edward Watson Howden articulated fair employment and fair housing laws, and non-discrimination and desegregation policies
throughout his professional life. He was born in 1918 in Oakland, CA to Robert Howden, Jr. and Grace Brady Howden. He and
his sisters, Jean and Elizabeth, were raised during the Depression years. Their grandfather, Robert Howden, Sr., immigrated
from Galashiels, Scotland in 1882 and eventually founded Howden Tile in Oakland.
Howden attended University High School in Oakland. With fellow seniors Paul Chown and Wyman Hicks, he published
Cub Commentator,
a mimeographed newspaper, in the Howden basement. He also created a discussion group of students interested in exploring issues
and problems.
While a student at the University of California, Berkeley, he created and moderated "Town Hall of the Lawns," a lunchtime
forum on current issues. He was also editor of a campus literary magazine and served as vice president of Stiles Hall, the
university YMCA. Howden was selected to represent UC Berkeley in the annual Rhodes Scholarship competition in 1938. However,
the program was suspended during World War II. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1942.
As executive director of the California Housing Association, he testified on "California's Housing Needs" to the Tolan Committee
on Interstate Migration (in 1940).
Howden attended Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1942 to 1944 but was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army. He
served with the Quartermaster Technical Training Service, leaving in 1946.
He then began working as executive director of the San Francisco Council for Civic Unity, a multiracial human rights organization
focused on non-discrimination, desegregation, equal housing and employment laws and public policy. At the time, there were
not state or federal law prohibiting discrimination in redevelopment programs or private employment. With the council, he
co-authored
A Civil Rights Inventory of San Francisco
(with Irving Babow) in 1958. In
The Postwar Struggle for Civil Rights, African Americans in San Francisco, 1945-1975,
Paul T. Miller called the
Civil Rights Inventory
"the most comprehensive study on African American concerns since the 1944 survey,
The Negro War Worker in San Francisco"
(by Charles S. Johnson, et. al.). Howden and others worked from 1949 to 1957 to establish the San Francisco Fair Employment
Practice ordinance.
He left CCU in 1958 to lead the San Francisco Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, the first such agency in the state.
There, he worked to settle disputes through dialogue, conference, and conciliation. Howden actively participated in the successful
campaigns for the California Fair Employment Practice Commission and the state's Fair Housing Law.
In 1959, Gov. Edmund G. Brown appointed Howden as chief of the newly-created Division of Fair Employment Practices in the
Department of Industrial Relations, where he administered the state's first FEPC law. He resigned in 1967 upon the election
of Gov. Ronald Reagan.
Howden's last job was as director and senior conciliation specialist with the federal Community Relations Service, Western
region. He was the first director for the four-state region. With CRS, he worked to resolve racial and ethnic-based conflicts
until his retirement in 1986. Among matters concerning tribal peoples, Howden worked to maintain open lines of communication
and to reduce the level of tension and violence between the American Indian Movement and local, state and federal law enforcement
agencies during the protracted armed standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973. In his retirement, he was active in
battles over certain major measures affecting housing discrimination and affirmative action.
His first marriage was to Marion Beers, with whom he had a son, Michael. The marriage ended in divorce. Howden married Anne
Saito, with whom he shared a son, Jonathan. Anne was also a human rights activist, working for many social and political causes.
The Howdens enjoyed time in the High Sierra and in the log cabin that Ed built in Gualala, CA. Howden died in 2018.
In a September 4, 2015 conversation with Tami Suzuki of the San Francisco Public Library, Howden reflected: "I feel that I've
done some useful work, contributed solutions to problems in many ways. On the other hand I constantly feel admiration for
the remarkable work of others. I am quite humbled by the work of many on behalf of the poor, those who are ill, for social
justice in the face of terrible tragedies that beset the world. I take some comfort in their fine work."
The collection documents Edward Howden's lifelong efforts to fight bias and end discrimination in employment, housing, and
other matters by working for what he preferred to call human rights. The papers cover his employment with the California Housing
Association, San Francisco Council for Civic Unity, San Francisco Commission on Fair Employment Practices, California Fair
Employment Practices Commission, and U.S. Community Relations Service.
Materials include essays, speeches and testimony, newsletters and brochures, radio program scripts, memoranda, newspaper clippings
and files on discriminatory housing (in San Francisco) and employment (in California) matters, the 1963 Los Angeles riots,
and 1964's California Proposition 14, which struck down the Rumford Housing Act. Howden's years-long struggles, locally and
statewide, for basic legislation around desegregation to dismantle restrictive housing covenants, the San Francisco Housing
Authority's "neighborhood pattern" policy, and realtors' "block buster" tactics; and lengthy campaigns for fair employment
as well as fair housing laws are covered. Also documents efforts to pass the San Francisco Fair Employment Ordinance and to
create the state FEPC. Mediation files from Howden's work with the U.S. Community Relations Service are included.
Of note is a dossier rebutting disloyalty charges brought by the U.S. Army in 1950 against Edward and Marion Howden. The charges
were successfully disproven.
Howden annotated some of the documents, from 2015 to 2017.
Organized into eight series: Series 1: Professional Associations and Activities; Series 2: California Housing Association/California
Housing and Planning Association; Series 3: San Francisco Council for Civic Unity; Series 4: San Francisco Commission on Equal
Employment Opportunity/Fair Employment Practices Commission; Series 5: California Fair Employment Practices Commission; Series
6: U.S. Community Relations Service; Series 7: Post-professional Activities; and Series 8: Personal. Series 2 through 6 document
Howden's employment.
Arranged mainly chronologically, with some series organized alphabetically.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Howden, Edward W.(Edward Watson), 1918-2018 -- Archives.
Civil rights -- California -- San Francisco.
Discrimination in employment -- California -- San Francisco.
Discrimination in housing -- California -- San Francisco.
Dispute resolution (Law) -- California -- San Francisco.
Human rights advocacy -- California -- San Francisco
Mediation -- California -- San Francisco.
Minorities -- Civil rights -- California -- San Francisco.
Minorities -- Employment -- California -- San Francisco.
Minorities -- Housing -- California -- San Francisco.
Race discrimination -- California -- San Francisco.