DUNBAR HIGH SCHOOL: The US FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL

Here is a historical question that many people do not know the answer to: What is the name of the first High School established for Black Americans, and where is its location? A hint to the residents of the District of Columbia: the location is here in Washington DC and the high school is still in existence.

The M Street High School was founded in 1870 as an educational mission at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and was originally named Preparatory High School for Colored Youth.  The name of the school was changed to Dunbar High School in 1906 in dedication to the great Black American poet, novelist and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who passed away that year at the age of 33.

Dunbar High School of Washington DC is America’s first public high school for Black students.  It was known for its excellent academics, enough so that some black parents moved to Washington specifically so their children could attend it.  Its faculty was paid well by the standards of the time, earning parity pay to Washington’s white school teachers because they were federal employees.  It also boasted a remarkably high number of graduates who went on to higher education, or were very successful in their chosen fields.

Since the school’s inception, in 1870, it has graduated and had on its teachers’ roster a extensive number of well-known African American figures of the 20th Century, many of which you will be hearing about in future posts.  To name a few:

• Nannie Helen Burroughs (1878-1961), orator, religious leader, civil rights activist, feminist, and businesswoman. On October 19, 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., which provided academic, religious and vocational classes for black girls and young women at a time when education was segregated in the South (Washington DC is a southern city).  She operated it until her death. It has since been renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor and provides coeducational classes for the elementary grades.

• Charles R. Drew (1904-1950), American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allies.

• Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950), a prominent African-American lawyer, was the Dean of Howard University Law School, and NAACP Litigation Director who played a significant role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws, which earned him the title “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow”.  He is also well known for having trained future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

• Robert C. Weaver (1907-1997), economist, academic, and political administrator;  He served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development  (H.U.D.) from 1966 to 1968, in the new agency established in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weaver was also the first African American to be appointed to a US cabinet-level position.

• Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964), author, educator, speaker and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history.  After receiving her PhD in history from the University of Paris–Sorbonne in 1924, Cooper became the fourth African-American woman ever to earn a doctoral degree. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.’s African-American community. She lived to be 106 years old, and she was busy writing and speaking for African American rights right up to the end of her life.  Every American historical textbook should have Anna Julia Haywood Cooper included. Ms. Cooper was the REAL Miss Jane Pittman (which was a 1971 fictional novel by Ernest Gaines and made into a movie with Cicely Tyson starring in it in 1974).  To give you a little taste of how large a legacy Ms. Cooper has left behind, on pages 26 and 27 of every United States passport contain the following quotation: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” – Anna Julia Cooper

 

An unusually high number of teachers and principals held Ph.D. degrees at Dunbar, including Carter G. Woodson, father of Black history Month and the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard (after W. E. B. Du Bois). This was the result of the entrenched white supremacy that pervaded throughout the nation’s professions. This infestation of White Supremacy excluded the majority of African-American women and men from faculty positions at predominantly white institutions of higher learning. As a consequence of this, Dunbar High School was considered the nation’s best high school for African Americans during the first half of the 20th century. It helped make Washington an educational and cultural capital.

Notes:

1. Dunbar High School of Washington D.C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar_High_School_(Washington,_D.C.)

2. Historical Sketch of Dunbar High School: https://www.dunbarhsdc.org/history.html

3. For an indepth history of Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, read “First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DKMP1HC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1