The “for sale” sign went up at 421 West St. in Howell on Monday.
It’s the former family home of LuLu Vere Childers, one of Howell’s most-celebrated and remarkable residents who played a role in Civil Rights history.
Childers and her formerly enslaved parents came to Howell from Dry Ridge, Kentucky, in 1875 when she was just 5 years old. She graduated as the valedictorian of the Howell High School Class of 1890, and as remarkable a student as she was, Childers was also an accomplished singer who performed regularly at area venues including the Howell Opera House and the First United Methodist Church.
Childers was a contralto, which means she had the lowest vocal range of the female voice types, landing between tenor and mezzo-soprano.
Childers went on to Oberlin College in Ohio, and taught at various schools before settling in at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she took its small music program and developed it first into a conservatory and then a school of music. A building named for her sits on the Howard campus next to one named for Civil Rights icon Frederick Douglass.
In addition to developing and running the music program at Howard University, Childers was a popular performer there, too. She was so popular that at the university’s 1929 Christmas service, she performed for a standing-room-only crowd from which hundreds of disappointed people had to be turned away.
While at Howard, Childers created an annual concert series that brought big-name musicians to the area. In 1938, she invited internationally famous contralto Marian Anderson to sing. Anderson had first performed at Carnegie Hall in 1928, and while she was touring Europe in 1935, famed conductor Arturo Toscanini said she had a voice “heard once in a hundred years.”
Because of Anderson’s fame, a larger venue was needed. Childers tried to book the concert at Constitution Hall, which was run by the Daughters of the American Revolution, but the all-white DAR refused to let Anderson perform there because she was Black.
Childers reached out to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, who invited Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial. What followed was the historic and celebrated 1939 Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which drew 75,000 people in D.C., and millions of Americans who listened on the radio from coast to coast.
The concert became one of the many turning points in the national Civil Rights battle, one that placed Anderson in a political spotlight unusual for a classical musician. It also caused thousands of DAR members — including the First Lady — to resign their memberships in protest.
A year after organizing that concert, Childers retired from Howard University and returned to her family home on West Street in Howell, where she died in 1946. She is buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Howell.
The home — while modest — holds a lot of history, including some of the Childers family’s furniture, photos, and books.
“It’s a simple 1900/1910 Sears kit home,” Root said. “People (in Howell) don’t realize what they have, and they don’t realize why it’s so important.”
A loose-knit group of people have started to figure out next steps. While they have lots of ideas, what they really need right now is a way to buy more time.
Finding that might prove difficult: Root said the unique location and size of the property make it attractive to developers for what could possibly be multi-tenant housing.
Some of the ideas Root said are being considered include making the house an interpretive museum. Consider, too, that the location and size of the property on which the house sits gives it a connecting face to West Street Park to the west, and an opportunity to the east for construction of a tridge through the woods and over a pond to the City of Howell’s Fire and Ice Depot District community gathering project currently under construction.
He envisions possible field trips to the house, and he believes it could become a heritage site with an event center facing the woods that could accommodate 75-100 people for field trips and other gatherings.
But before anything can happen, Root says time is needed for a nonprofit or an angel to come forward.
“We need to find someone with a heart for Howell,” Root said. “This is a once-in-a-180-years opportunity.”
If you’re interested in helping the effort to preserve the Lulu Childers home, you can email Lindsay Root.
