He was just like many other 11-year-old boys who entered Northeast Junior High School in the fall of 1964. Slightly built, not yet fully grown, with a quick, flashing smile. He was into sports, but not necessarily girls or academics. Nevertheless, Richard Howell, Jr. was a standout.
In a school full of white kids, he was Black.
Richard Howell announces intramural sports scores from Principal Gerald Roehning’s office in 1967. (Star Tribune)
His father, Richard Howell, Sr., was a mail carrier. Richard, Sr., decided he disliked walking a mail route in summer’s heat and winter’s cold and, encouraged by his wife Josephine, entered the University of Minnesota with the goal of becoming a teacher.
The family moved to student housing near the U. Compared to today’s married student housing, it was downright miserable. While Richard, Sr., delighted in the diversity of the neighbors in the enclave (“It was like the United Nations,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune), his son recalled that living in half of a Quonset hut was tight quarters for a family of five. Dick, Gayle and Eric attended Tuttle School.
Howell’s sixth grade teacher sensed something special in the boy. The class was going to present a play about the Civil War. Howell wanted the part of a wounded Yankee soldier, but his classmates voted him down during an audition, preferring a white student. He asked for a second try. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, “but all of a sudden this acting … anointing … came over me.” The teacher cast him as a Confederate sergeant. The teacher showed him that color didn’t matter — ability did.
When his father decided to attend St. Cloud University instead of the U, the family moved to a duplex at 2520 Pierce St. NE. and Dick enrolled at Northeast Junior High.
First day of school
Dick didn’t really understand what he was getting into.
“My family didn’t talk about race,” Howell said in a recent interview. “We never talked about civil rights. The schools never talked about it. The civil rights movement was really hot and heavy in the South, but I had no sense of Black pride or Black Power. I was just an 11-year-old kid trying to get an education. Ironically, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and Malcolm X were picking up on how great Black Power is, but I didn’t get the message in time.”
School counselor Jim Mikkelson warned the Howells. “I told them I wished I didn’t have to talk about it,” he told the Star Tribune in 1967, “but there would be some kids who would say things. I asked them not to let it affect their sense of the whole community.”
On the first day of school, Howell walked the nine blocks to the school. He noticed a car driving slowly around the blocks as he headed up Lowry Avenue; it was his father, making sure he made it to school undisturbed.
“I was scared,” Howell said. “I didn’t understand how I would be treated, how I would be received. I was nervous, not enough to keep me home, or run away, but enough to make me understand that I was in a real situation. It was a cultural shock for me. And for the student body.
“In those days, the seventh graders had a half day first. Then the rest of the student body came the next day. I walked into the school and got stares. It wasn’t public knowledge that I was coming to school. There was no ‘breaking news,’ no email blast. And there was silence. It wasn’t a bad reception. It was an unspoken one.”
The only person he knew was Sam Anderson, a preacher’s kid whose dad led a church on Lowry Avenue between Pierce and Buchanan. He had introduced himself to the Howells when they moved in. “I kinda used his friendship to carry me.”
The summer before junior high, Howell attended a YMCA camp in Northeast, which gave him a chance to meet a few kids — some of whom he later recognized at school. “It was a mixed camp,” he said. “It wasn’t all white or all black.” That summer, he also gave his life over to Christ, relying on his new-found faith to get through some tough days.
He contended with bullies wielding racial slurs they’d heard at home. “They couldn’t wait,” Howell said. “If they saw me walking down the hallway, the diatribes would come out of their mouths. It hurt, it really hurt.” He pretended not to hear them.
In a 1967 interview, his mother told the Star Tribune, “He didn’t cry. He would come home from school real quiet. He’d go into his room and go to sleep.”
Just a regular kid
Howell tried to blend in as best he could with the student body. A rumor began circulating that Minnesota Twins catcher Earl Battey was moving to Northeast and his son Randy was going to attend the junior high. “The rumor couldn’t come at a better time,” Howell said. “Kids asked me if I was Randy Battey, and I said no. They kept asking.” A bit of a mischief maker, he seized the moment and said yes, he was Randy Battey. “I even wrote Randy Battey on my blue binder,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. Eventually, the kids caught on to the joke, “but by then, they were my friends,” he said. “Too late! You like me now, don’t ya?”
Another time, he rapped a boy on the back of his head with a ruler. The teacher saw him and made him stand in the corner. Recalling the incident, Howell said, “I was so immature. I was not an angel after all, was I?”
Once, he called someone a “Polack.” “‘You should never call someone that,’ my friend said. I asked him why. ‘How would you like it if someone called you a n—–?’ my friend said. I never used that term again.”
He played baseball at Windom Park and at the Northeast Park “A Field,” winning a few more friends to his side. “I developed some tight-knit relationships that had me liking Northeast rather than hating it,” Howell said. “But I still knew my place. I didn’t go to dances. I was very careful not to hang around after school. All my socializing was during school.
“I was fighting for honor and respect and friendship. My relationship with Christ gave me a deeper conviction not to make enemies, but to make friends.”
Teachers were a saving grace. Two in particular took a special interest in Howell: choir teacher Jerome Bisek and English teacher Hallie Brickner.
Brickner gave him high marks on a paper he wrote about his ancestors. When Dick told her his mother had helped, Brickner said she’d like to meet her. Dick may have inherited his sense of mischief from his mom.
“I made most of it up,” Josephine told the Star Tribune. “I’d have died if she’d come over here.”
Bisek opened a new avenue of expression for him. In ninth grade, Bisek chose Howell to sing in the ninth grade choir, an honor not accorded to all students; singing gave him a feeling of belonging. “Mr. Bisek was a lot of fun,” Howell recalled. Bisek’s mentorship culminated when Howell acted as the preacher in a production of “Oklahoma,” singing “Poor Jud is Dead.” His acting chops emerged once again, and he played the role like a born comedian.
By the end of seventh grade, Richard Howell was an accepted member of the student body. He noticed the difference the following year, when students said, “Hey, Dick” in passing instead of staring. The taunting and name-calling diminished. “It was an honor to be anonymous,” he said.
In ninth grade, the homeroom students voted to send representatives to the student council. At a council meeting that he missed, Richard Howell was elected president. “It was a remarkable miracle,” he said. “People were no longer judging me by the color of my skin, but by the content of my character.”
When science teacher Edel Scholl died, Howell represented the student body at a memorial service held in the school’s courtyard, where a tree was planted and a plaque was placed. A grainy photocopy shows him at the podium, speaking to the crowd while members of the school choir look on.
The day the of the ninth grade graduation ceremony, many members of the class went to Lake Johanna to party. Howell maintained his boundaries, opting to visit his sixth grade teacher at Tuttle instead.
Molotov cocktails on the sidewalk
The Howell family had lived in Northeast for four years when, at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 1968, someone lobbed Molotov cocktails at the Pierce Street duplex. It had been preceded by a barrage of threatening phone calls, ambulance and taxi visits, a delivery of seven cases of beer and two false fire alarms. Only one firebomb ignited. Police found fingerprints on one of the three whiskey bottles that landed in a snowbank.
The following day, the media descended on the Howell household. Newspapers printed shocking headlines: “Bomb Tossed at Negro’s Home,” and “City Negro Family Harassed.” With Richard, Sr. working nights at the post office and commuting to school in St. Cloud during the day, it fell to Josephine to act as family spokesperson.
When asked if the family had had any trouble with neighbors, she responded, “Heavens, no! The neighbors are just perfect. We belong to clubs here and everyone has gone out of their way to be nice to us and our children.” She said some neighbors even stayed up all night on following nights to keep an eye on their home.
The family also received phone calls and letters of encouragement. Several neighbors came by to apologize and ask them to stay in the neighborhood. “That shocked us. White people writing us letters like that.”
Nevertheless, the family moved out of Northeast.
Richard Howell speaks at Northeast Middle School in 2017, 40 years after he graduated from the ninth grade. (Northeaster file)
“The Bishop”
Dick Howell decided he didn’t want to go through another year of student acclimation at Edison. He was attending Marshall High in Southeast Minneapolis when the firebombing occurred. In his junior year he enrolled in South Dakota’s Augustana Academy, which was actively recruiting Black students. He once again led the student council, and was elected homecoming “knight” in 1969. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from North Central Bible College and a masters in counseling psychology.
He’s been the pastor of Shiloh Temple International Ministries since 1980, the same Pentecostal church his grandparents, Rev. Howard and Sister Mattie Smith, founded in South Minneapolis in 1931. The Pentacostal Assembly elevated him to bishop in 2004; the same year, he moved the church to 1201 W. Broadway with the help of his Bettye, his wife and co-pastor.
Mention the words “The Bishop” in North Minneapolis and just about everyone in the community knows who you’re talking about. Whenever there’s a crisis, he’s often at the scene.
He looks back at his time in Northeast as “a great time to teach me to love people, forgive people and work with people and celebrate whatever journey they’re on. Don’t let hate be your motivation. Let love be your motivation. That’s what Northeast Junior High School taught me.”
Editor’s note: Cynthia Sowden attended Northeast Junior High School with Richard Howell.