Millie Howell was a mother, educator and renowned artist with flair

Millicent Merritt “Millie” Howell, a mother, educator and accomplished artist who flourished for seven decades in Philadelphia and was a forerunner of racial reconcilliation here with her husband Boots, died on December 6, 2020, at Neshoba General hospital. She was 93. 

The cause of death was COVID-19, her family said.

Ms. Howell began studying art formally in 1945 at the encouragement of her cousin Dr. William Willis, a classics professor at the University of Mississippi.

One of her first watercolors, completed while still a student at Ole Miss, was a rendering of a Minoan vase that accompanied an article published by Dr. David M. Robinson in the “American Journal of Archaeology” (January 1950).

During her long career, she painted over 200 works, many now in private collections in the South and West, such as those of Bill Yates of Philadelphia and Kay Russell of Dallas, as well as many featured in prominent museums and institutions, including the Meridian Museum of Art, the Mississippi University for Women, and the Southwest Mississippi Community College. 

Her work “Feeling Is First” was one of 43 of 400 art pieces selected for the 1978 grand opening of the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.

Three of her other works are in the museum’s permanent collection: “Configuration, Field of Lilies,” and “Metamorphosis.” These three were also award-winning works judged in competitive juried shows, including the latter, which was presented first prize by the renowned New Orleans abstract-expressionist Ida Kohlmeyer at the La Font Workshop in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in 1973. 

During that workshop, Kohlmeyer remarked to Millie that “a painting must have a sense of urgency.” 

Howell’s works strived to possess that imperative and were further distinguished by their dramatic use of colors. She would, when asked, often exclaim, “I am very passionate about color, and cannot resist using it unabashedly.” 

Some of Ms. Howell’s other prominent teachers included Moe Booker, Homer Casteel, Fred Conway, Bill Dunlap, Alvin Sella, Joseph Smith, Hugh Williams, and Karl Wolfe. 

In some 60 years of painting, she received over 50 awards, more than half top prizes. A sampling of these include awards at shows at the Brooks Memorial Gallery in Memphis, the Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, the Mary Buie Museum in Oxford, the Delgado Museum in New Orleans, the Edgewater Plaza in Gulfport, and the George E. Ohr Arts and Cultural Center in Biloxi. 

In 1995 she won the Mississippi Art Colony Lifetime Achievement Award, and is further distinguished in having won more awards there than anyone in the history of the institution, which was formed in 1948. She joined the colony in 1950.  

Ms. Howell is featured in several books on Mississippi artists, including the state textbook used throughout the 1960s, “Mississippi History,” by Dr. J.K. Bettersworth (then vice-president of Mississippi State University); “Of Art and Artists: Selected Reviews of the Arts in Mississippi 1955-76” by Louis Dollarhide; “Art in Mississippi: 1720-1980” by Patti Carr Black; and “Homer Casteel: An Artist and His Students,” compiled and published by the Meridian Museum of Art. 

She also served as a board member of several arts organizations, including the Mississippi Art Association, the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Arts Commission, and the Mississippi Art Colony. 

In addition to her paintings, Ms. Howell designed and made a stained glass window for the St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, the program cover for the 1998 Neshoba County Fair, and an album cover for the band, BTD (Lost/Twin Tone Records, New York, 1988). 

Howell was born in Meridian in 1927 to Melton Tucker Merritt and Lora Markline Merritt. 

She attended public school there and began college at the local junior college, now Meridian Community College. After two semesters, she left to attend the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where she graduated with a degree in elementary education in 1949.

After graduation,  she taught several years at public schools in Shaw, Tucker, and Pearl River, where she met her future husband, Gerald “Boots” Howell of Philadelphia. 

They married in Oxford in 1950 and not long after moved to Philadelphia, where they lived for the rest of their lives. 

Boots preceded Millie in death in 2016. 

Her children and grandchildren are very thankful for the emphasis their mother and grandmother placed on the arts, and in giving them the support to pursue careers in creative fields, which they all chose to follow, they said.

During the heyday of her artistic career, Ms. Howell was involved in attempts to improve the racial climate of her adopted home, and in 1966, she and Jeanne and Harriet DeWeese became local founders of the Philadelphia (MS) to Philadelphia (PA) Project dedicated to protesting past racial transgressions and promoting hope, understanding, and brotherly love among all people. 

A 1989 Philadelphia to Philadelphia project modeled after the initial one brought the families of the three civil rights workers murdered here on June 21, 1964, registering blacks to vote to Philadelphia, Mississippi. Then-Secretary of State Dick Molpus apologized at that time. 

Those two projects laid the groundwork in 2004 for The Philadelphia Coalition, a multi-ethnic group of Neshoba County people who put together a commemoration with the families of the slain and issued a call for justice backed by local and state leaders. That call for justice in 2005 led to an arrest and a murder conviction 41 years to the day that the the young men were murdered by a gang of men that included law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan.

Millie, her husband Boots, her children, and friends, were featured in several documentary films and articles about race relations in Philadelphia, reflecting on their firsthand accounts of incidents leading up to and following Freedom Summer 1964. 

Some of the decisive actions she took are recorded in two books: “Witness in Philadelphia” by Florence Mars (1977), and “We Are Not Afraid” by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray (1988). 

As proud as they are of their mother’s dedication to the arts, her children saiid they are equally proud of the stand she and their father took for racial justice at a time when civic leaders often abdicated their societal responsibilities. 

“It is with pride that they remember seeing and hearing Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a family when he spoke in Philadelphia in the summer of 1964,” the family said.

Among other accomplishments that gave her pride was the co-founding of the St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church, dedicated by Bishop John Allen in 1964. The unofficial church mission, like Millie, celebrates a body of souls committed to the beauty of creation and the principles of social justice, the family said.

Millie Howell is survived by three sons: Mark Harold Howell (Stephanie Artz); David Tucker Howell (Jan Forbes); John Gerald Howell (Diana Howell); one daughter, Shawn Elizabeth Byars (Lannie Byars); two grandsons, Casey Howell Byars and Cassidy Howell Byars (Megan Byars), and one great-grandson, Jackson James Byars. 

She often exclaimed that her chief accomplishment was being the mother of four beautiful and talented children. Honored as they are by those words, her children said they point to their mother’s remarkable artistic abilities and art career.

Services have been postponed because of the restrictions on public gatherings due to the coronavirus, the family said.

Offerings of remembrance can be made to St. Francis of Assisi Church, 10701 St. Francis Drive, Philadelphia, MS 39350; the Mississippi Art Colony, 3863 Morrison Road, Utica, MS 39175; or the Meridian Museum of Art, 628 25th Avenue, Meridian, MS 39301.