Category: Education

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

Yes the above photo is of Armstrong students, but they are on the Dunbar campus. Chapter 9 is about Dunbar students who went to serve and have careers in the US military. I will focus on what happened at Dunbar.

Dunbar had the Dunbar High School Cadet Corps, referred to as the Corps in the chapter. Armstrong had a Corps too, but the book isn’t about them. It appears the Corps formed in the 1940s, probably a response to America’s involvement in World War II.

We learn about the importance of the Corps through Wesley Brown. Brown was the son of a truck driver and a laundress, and he himself had a job in a mailroom. He juggled school work and work work. Brown credited the high expectations he was held to at Dunbar and the discipline drilling gave him a leg up over other cadets at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. And it was at Annapolis he met and befriended Jimmy Carter.

But back to Dunbar.  “The cadets were a part of everyday life at Dunbar.” They marched everywhere. Inside the building, as there was a large space on the 1st floor that could accommodate a group that size. They marched in front of the school’s armory. They practiced drills with Browning rifles. They even had a firing range at the school. Cadets were expected to keep their uniforms sharp and clean.

Students in the Corps practiced/drilled constantly. There were competitions. The author mentions drill competitions going back to 1890s. The drilling and the expectations placed on students provided them with the skills needed to serve well in our armed forces.

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

This chapter focuses on the Class of 1946 and their stories. From these individuals’ stories we can see how much Dunbar meant to them and what a unique institution it was. We can gather this group was still alive to extract this history from when the author was gathering material.

The story of Vashti Atkins, who was the Editor in Chief of the Dunbar yearbook, was less than romantic. In her sophomore year she got TB and at that time had to go to a special hospital where she stayed for a little over 3 years. But while in the hospital she was roomed with another Dunbar student, Vivian Stark and they formed a life long friendship. When she returned to Dunbar, she was a legal adult.

The next story was that of Joe Stewart was was from New York City. Dunbar must have been something special as it seemed to attract students beyond the District of Columbia’s borders. His parents were concerned about his academic future. His father graduated from M Street, so his parents decided to send him to live with grandparents in DC to attend Dunbar. Stewart recalled an instance when he and a fellow student Leon Ransom were collecting signatures to protest Safeway’s lack of Black cashiers and the police were called. Leon “Andy” Ransom was the son of NAACP lawyer Leon A. Ransom, and upon recognition of the name the police left the boys alone. The chapter also tells Carol Graham’s story and we learn later that Carol and Joe Stewart married and their lives after Dunbar.

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

Oh this will be quick. There was a rumor about Dunbar that darker skinned students were not allowed there. It was wrong. Students of various shades and economic backgrounds attended.

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

The sixth chapter gets into the culture of Dunbar High and the teachers’ and administrators’ efforts to form future Black leaders. Not only did they have high academic standards, they also enforced high standards regarding appearance, hygiene and other mannerisms. It had elements of a finishing school when looking at the rules regarding how students were to conduct themselves.

Not everyone likes high standards and later we’ll see it manifest itself in hatred towards Dunbar by those within the DC Black community. But immediately, Dunbar started to lose students and the standards was one of the reasons cited. There are three reasons mentioned by the author: failing out; transfer to the technical high schools such as Armstrong; needing to work. The Great Migration, where US African Americans began moving out of the South to other parts of the country was just starting. Students from previously poorly run Southern country schools were probably ill prepared for the rigors at Dunbar.

Right or wrong, the faculty felt the way to preserve Dunbar was ti keep the academic bar astronomically high. The school was not a democracy but a meritocracy or a dictatorship, with academic expectation as the undeniable, unchallenged boss.

Being a Dunbar student was a way of life. The strong program was a given and was the reason why students went to Dunbar. And would excel, period. The school adopted a crest and a Latin motto, Adveris Major, Par Secundis (Greater Adversity, Equal in Prosperity).

In the handbook students were instructed in how to behave in public and on and off campus. Young ladies were cautioned by the assistant principal Miss Julia Evangeline Brooks to not powder their faces in school other than the dressing or locker rooms. She also dictated the kinds of fabrics girls should have, favoring gingham and washable fabrics over silks and chiffon.

The author also notes Booker T. Washington’s, “The Gospel of the Toothbrush.” Teaching and enforcing good hygiene was another Dunbar value. The author wrote, “Cleanliness was the American way or the upper and middle classes, and striving Negroes knew appearing immaculate was the key to their acceptance and future prosperity.” The rules and enforcement regarding hygiene and cleanliness was not equal for the sexes. Boys were encouraged to bathe daily, brush teeth more often and be neat in appearance. It seemed no one was telling them what fabrics they should and shouldn’t wear.

The punishment for failing to adhere to the rules was to go to the assistant principal’s office. Those who continued failure to maintain standards would have to reregister to return to the school.

It may seem harsh, but you can’t argue with results. The first class to go through all 4 years, the Class of 1920 included Wm. Mercer Cook and William Allison Davis. An ambassador and an anthropologist.

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

In this chapter we move from the M Street School because it was overcrowded and finally get the original Dunbar High School building in Truxton Circle. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the school, the current Dunbar High building is version 3.0. The second version was a tall prison like building that was ugly as sin and needed to be torn down.

M Street, a Black DC high school, did not have the facilities that the White high schools had, such as a cafeteria or a gym. Of course there was a lot of drama and politicking to get the new Black high school built. There was an idea to build it on the Howard campus.

There is a section in the chapter about Paul Laurence Dunbar, for whom Dunbar High School is named. He was a Dayton, OH resident and friend of the Wright Brothers. He was known in Dayton for being an elevator poet, hawking his published poems to his riders. It appears he was a victim of audience capture, where the larger White audience liked his Black sounding poems, pigeonholing him as a Black poet for Black poems, as opposed to just being an American poet. He died before the school was built in 1906 at the age of 33.

Finally, on 1st Street NW, between O and N Streets NW, on October 2, 1916 Dunbar High opened to serve 1,117 students. It was a vast improvement over the M Street building. It had a cafeteria, and a gym, and a library, chemistry labs, and a rifle range. Probably the only time guns at school was a good thing, supervised by responsible adults.

This year for Black History Month we’ll review chapter by chapter Alison Stewart’s First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. This is more Truxton Circle related then this blog’s previous annual looks at Shaw resident and founder of Negro History Week (later Black history month) Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. As Dunbar High School is located in Truxton Circle currently taking up all of Square 554.

Like some of the previous it is about the things before Dunbar High School on Square 554 in Truxton Circle. Instead a lot of this chapter is about some political drama regarding the principal of the M Street School, Anna Julia Cooper, on the other side of New York Ave NW.

This chapter provides a lot of valuable background information. It recalls the life of Anna J. Cooper and the Terrells, who were also at M Street. However, nothing about the school’s move to Truxton. So I’m skipping this one as well.