Clayton Powell Jr., A. Philip Randolph, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Autherine Lucy. In the final months of 1955, Howard and his family were increasingly subjected to death threats and economic pressure. He sold most of his property and moved permanently to Chicago. His national reputation as a civil rights leader still seemed secure. He accused J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, of being slow to find killers of blacks in the South. In early 1956, the Chicago Defender gave Howard the top spot on its annual national honor roll. He founded the Howard Medical Center on the South Side and served for one year as president of the National Medical Association, the black counterpart of the AMA. Howard also became medical director of S.B. Fuller Products Company. Samuel B. Fuller was likely the wealthiest black man in the United States at the time. Politics Howard was unusual among prominent civil rights leaders because he strongly opposed socialism. He consistently praised the educator Booker T. Washington, late president of the Tuskegee Institute, whom he regarded as a "towering genius" for his emphasis on self-help and entrepreneurship. He "had little patience for the utopian schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every Communist in America right back to Russia where they belong.' In a similar vein, he said, 'There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi today that real Jeffersonian democracy and the religion of Jesus Christ cannot solve'." His medical and political endeavors exposed him to the generational poverty among the black community in Mound Bayou, Mississippi leading him to give public support for the desegregation of schools. Once the decision of Brown v. Board of Education was public, there was increasing violence aimed at members of the UOFA and Howard himself. Despite this, Howard continue to fight for educational and medical equity and, as mentioned, was integral in the investigation and trial of the murder of Emmett Till. In 1958, Howard ran for Congress as a Republican against the powerful incumbent black Democrat, Rep. William L. Dawson, a close ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Although he received much favorable media publicity, and support from leading black opponents of the Daley machine, Dawson overwhelmed him at the polls. Howard was unable to counter Dawson's efficient political organization, and rising voter discontent because of the