Education
He was a long-term professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1954. Thereafter, he attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He was a long-term professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1954. Thereafter, he attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A native of Maine, Howard served for three years in the United States Navy in the South Pacific during World World War World War II In 1964, he returned to Louisiana State University a decade after his graduation and remained on the faculty for nearly thirty years. Topics covered include social and political background and socio-economic factors in voting. Howard also studied Morrison"s three gubernatorial campaigns, 1956, 1960, and 1964, from a sociological standpoint and found that the former New Orleans mayor improved his showing in each race but still fell short of victory, having been defeated by Earl Kemp Long, Jimmie Davis, and John McKeithen.
In 1975, Howard joined Mark T. Carleton and Joseph B. Parker in the publication of the anthology, Readings in Louisiana Politics.
Howard died at his Baton Rouge home at the age of eighty-seven. He was preceded in death by a son, Benjamin Howard.
In 1963, Howard joined William C. Havard and Rudolf Heberle in co-authorship of the work, The Louisiana Elections of 1960, which focuses on (1) the 1959–1960 gubernatorial campaign, won by Jimmie Davis for his second nonconsecutive term, and (2) the following presidential contest, in which John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson won Louisiana"s then ten electoral votes. The authors determined, for instance, that Kennedy won in the state because he ran more strongly among the working class in South Louisiana, and Richard M. Nixon lost North Louisiana to independent electors pledged to United States. Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia.
In 1971, Howard published through Louisiana State University Political Tendencies in Louisiana, a 476-page scholarly study of his adopted state"s political climate from statehood through 1970. Chapters include "Two-Party Politics, Louisiana Style, 1834–1852", "Another Look at Reconstruction, "The Rise of Longism", "The Long Era, Bifactional Politics, 1928–1956", and "The Issue of Civil Rights and Presidential Elections". In 1972, Howard wrote a review of Politics of Southern Equality: Law and Social Change in a Mississippi County (1970), by Frederick M. Wirt, an examination of how civil rights laws passed between 1957 and 1965 changed the political, social, and cultural fabric at the local level in Panola County, Mississippi.
In 1978, Howard published a review of John Dittmer"s Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 in which he noted that the spirit of the black community coupled with some interracial cooperation at the time provided the thrust for the later dismantlement of white supremacy.
He was a member of the Unitarian Church in Baton Rouge, where a memorial service was held on January 9, 2010.
