Howden (Edward) Papers, 1905-2017, bulk 1944-1985

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Summary

Title:
Edward Howden Papers
Dates:
1905-2017, bulk 1944-1985
Creators:
Howden, Edward W. (Edward Watson), 1918-2018
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.
Extent:
4 cartons, 2 manuscripts boxes, 2 flat boxes, 1 oversized flat box (6.5 cubic feet)
Language:
Collection materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Edward Howden Papers, (SFH 731), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Background

Scope and content:

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.

Biographical / historical:

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."

Acquisition information:
Donated by Edward W. Howden in 2013, with additional gifts made in each successive year through 2017.
Processing information:

Processed by Tami J. Suzuki in 2023.

Arrangement:

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.

Physical location:
Open for research. The collection is offsite and advance notice is required for retrieval. Material must be requested at least 4 business days in advance of visit.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Finding aid prepared by Tami J. Suzuki.
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-07-25 19:26:20 +0000 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

The collection is open for research and available for use during San Francisco History Center hours. Photographs are available during Photo Desk hours. This collection must be requested at least 4 business days in advance of visit.

Terms of access:

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.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Edward Howden Papers, (SFH 731), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Location of this collection:
San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102, US
Contact:
(415) 557-4567
sfhistory@sfpl.org
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