Charter Day 2022
This year's Charter Day dinner will be a virtual experience.
Save the Date: March 5th, 2022
View Sponsorship PacketAbout Charter Day
The annual Charter Day Celebration is the culminating event of a weekend dedicated to celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the University Charter by President Andrew Johnson on March 2, 1867.
As no other single event on the University calendar, the Charter Day Celebration displays before a cosmopolitan audience, the University’s strengths in many dimensions. The Celebration showcases its enduring qualities in the development of excellence and leadership as will be reflected in tributes, on March 6th, to three outstanding alumni; its attractiveness to, and substantive partnership with, the corporate world; and its continuing relevance to the community as well as students, alumni and friends of all ages.
Since 1943, awards have been presented to alumni for their distinguished postgraduate achievements in a variety of fields. To date, over 300 alumni, including this year’s recipients, have been so honored, including luminaries such as Zora Neale Hurston, Thurgood Marshall, Ossie Davis, and L. Douglas Wilder.
Over the past decades, the Celebration has reached a level of prominence as Howard’s preeminent fundraising event. The day preceding the Celebration, an academic convocation is held in Cramton Auditorium on the main campus.