| Howell, Michigan | |
| Official Name: | City of Howell |
| Settlement Type: | City |
| Pushpin Map: | Michigan |
| Pushpin Label Position: | left |
| Pushpin Label: | Howell |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location within the state of Michigan |
| Mapsize: | 250 |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Michigan |
| Subdivision Type2: | County |
| Subdivision Name2: | Livingston |
| Established Title: | Platted |
| Established Date: | 1835 |
| Established Title1: | Incorporated |
| Established Date1: | 1863 |
| Unit Pref: | Imperial |
| Area Footnotes: | [1] |
| Area Total Km2: | 13.46 |
| Area Land Km2: | 12.93 |
| Area Water Km2: | 0.53 |
| Area Total Sq Mi: | 5.19 |
| Area Land Sq Mi: | 4.99 |
| Area Water Sq Mi: | 0.20 |
| Population As Of: | 2020 |
| Population Total: | 10068 |
| Population Density Km2: | 778.80 |
| Population Density Sq Mi: | 2017.23 |
| Population Metro: | 4296250 (Metro Detroit) |
| Timezone: | Eastern (EST) |
| Utc Offset: | -5 |
| Timezone Dst: | EDT |
| Utc Offset Dst: | -4 |
| Elevation M: | 285 |
| Elevation Ft: | 935 |
| Coordinates: | 42.6097°N -83.9328°W |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP Codes |
| Postal Code: | 48843, 48844 |
| Area Code: | 517 |
| Blank Name: | FIPS code |
| Blank Info: | 26-39540[2] |
| Blank1 Name: | GNIS feature ID |
| Blank1 Info: | 0628717[3] |
Howell is the largest city and county seat of Livingston County, Michigan.[4] As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 10,068. The city is mostly surrounded by Howell Township, but the two are administered autonomously. Howell is part of the South Lyon–Howell–Brighton urban area, which is an extension of the larger Detroit–Warren–Dearborn (Metro Detroit) metropolitan statistical area.
January 1836 saw the establishment of the first post office. Flavius J. B. Crane was postmaster and the post office was in the Eagle Tavern.[5] In March of this same year, there was a mail route started from the village of Kensington which went through with a stop located in Howell until ending west in the town of Grand Rapids.
The City of Howell is the county seat of Livingston County. On 24 March 1836, the legislature passed an act organizing Livingston County and Howell was slated to become the county seat Though the newly established Brighton nearby claimed for 12 years that they should be the town seat instead which then died down once a County Office was built.
The town was originally called Livingston Center and was established as a village by an act of Legislature on 14 March 1863, consisting of sections 35 and 36, and the south half of sections 25 and 26 of Howell Township.[6]
The Howell Home Rule City Charter was initially adopted in 1955.[7]
For many decades, Howell has had the reputation of being associated with the Ku Klux Klan due to white supremacist leader and Michigan Grand Dragon 1971-1979 Robert E. Miles, who held KKK gatherings on his farm 12 miles north of the city in Cohoctah Township with a Howell mailing address.[8] Miles died in 1992, but the gatherings, including the burning of crosses, continued.[9] The reputation persisted into the 2000s, with events such as a public auction of KKK items scheduled for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday in January 2005,[10] the 2010 suspension of a teacher who removed students for wearing a Confederate flag and making antigay slurs,[11] students' racist tweets toward a racially mixed team in 2014.[12] The Livingston Diversity Council, founded in response to a 1988 cross-burning on the lawn of a black family,[13] promotes diversity and inclusion in the county.[14] While they are numerous in Metro Detroit, Howell is not listed as an active home to any hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[15]
On Saturday, Oct. 22, 1994, less than a dozen Ku Klux Klansmen from outside Howell held a rally on the steps of the historic Livingston County Courthouse. According to a reporter for the Livingston Post, the town may have been chosen because of its reputation for intolerance. The Rev. Ben Bohnsack, the pastor of the First United Methodist Church in nearby Brighton at the time, described the approaching rally as an "assault on the values" of the community.
The day of the rally, the courthouse was put under the protection of 174 police officers from every law enforcement agency in the county. An 8-foot-tall chain-link fence was erected around the courthouse, with two additional sections raised on Grand River Avenue to contain protesters and observers. The fence was dismantled after the rally and on the following day, citizens assembled with brooms, mops and buckets for a symbolic cleansing of the courthouse steps.[16]
About a dozen masked white supremacists marched through downtown Howell on July 21, 2024, chanting "Heil Hitler" and carrying signs with messages such as "White Lives Matter" and "End the War on White Children". They began their demonstration on the lawn of the Livingston County courthouse where in 1994 members of the community symbolically scrubbed the steps following a KKK rally.
Several miles east of Howell at the Latson Road/I-96 overpass in Genoa Township, pictures posted to a community Facebook group showed demonstrators hanging KKK and Nazi flags over the side of the overpass. One of the photos showed them with a Trump flag, while the Livingston Post uploaded a video made by a passerby in which one of the protestors is heard saying, "We love Hitler. We love Trump."[17]
A week after the white supremacist march, at an anti-white supremacist counterprotest in downtown Howell on July 28, residents cleansed the sidewalk to symbolically wash away the racism.[18]
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 4.95sqmi, of which 4.75sqmi is land and 0.2sqmi is water.[19]
As of the census of 2000,[20] the city had 9,232 people, 3,857 households, and 2,247 families. The population density was 2245.8PD/sqmi. The city's racial makeup was 96.0% White, 0.3% African American, 0.6% Native American, 1.2% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 7.2% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 2.2% of the population.
The city's median household income was $43,958 and the median family income was $57,149. Males had a median income of $44,980 versus $27,956 for females. The city's per capita income was $22,254. About 4.6% of families and 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.2% of those under the age of 18 and 7.9% of those 65 and older.
As of the census[21] of 2010, the city had 9,489 people, 4,028 households, and 2,237 families. The population density was 1997.7PD/sqmi. There were 4,551 housing units at an average density of 958.1/sqmi. The city's racial makeup was 94.8% White, 0.4% African American, 0.7% Native American Native American, 1.1% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 1.3% from other races, and 1.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 3.5% of the population.
There were 4,028 households, of which 30.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.8% were married couples living together, 13.6% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 44.5% were non-families. 36.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.25 and the average family size was 2.97.
The median age in the city was 35.2 years. 23.2% of the city's population was under age 18; 10.1% was between the age 18 and 24; 29.8% was from age 25 to 44; 23.6% was from age 45 to 64; and 13.5% was age 65 or older. The city's gender makeup was 48.2% male and 51.8% female.[22]
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This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Howell has a humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfb" on climate maps.[24]