In 2023, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate the former “Colored School No. 4,” a protected landmark from demolition or significant alterations, preserving its architectural and historic features. Eric Leroy Adams, the 110th mayor of New York City since 2022, designated $6 … Read MoreColored School No. 4 (1849-1894)
The Abiel Smith School, originally founded in 1798 by African American parents in the Boston, Massachusetts community, was an institution for free African American students. It became known as the Abiel Smith School in 1815 after Abiel Smith, a wealthy white benefactor, endowed the school. The Abiel Smith … Read MoreAbiel Smith School (1798-1855)
Founded and constructed in 1867 in Harford County, Maryland, the McComas Institute, also known as Mountain School, was built two years following the establishment of the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau which provided aid to former enslaved blacks and poor whites in the South in the wake of the U.S. Civil … Read MoreMcComas Institute (1867-1954)
Pearl High School, the most prominent black high school in Nashville, Tennessee, for nearly one century, opened its doors in the fall of 1883 on South Summer Street (now Fifth Avenue South). The first public school for blacks in Nashville, it was named after Joshua … Read MorePearl High School (1897-1983)
“Image Ownership: Mike Siegel” From the 1960s to the 1980s, Seattle, Washington public school pupils and their parents, as well as the school board and the courts, were involved in a series of contentious and highly controversial attempts to desegregate the city’s public schools racially. … Read MoreZion Preparatory Academy (1982–2004)
In the late 1970s after two decades of school desegregation efforts in Seattle, Washington, school administrators and parents of black children began to notice that average academic test scores for African American students began to lag behind those of white and Asian pupils in almost … Read MoreThe African American Academy (1991-2009)
Hosanna School Class Photo, 1894 “Image Courtesy of Hosanna School Museum” Founded in 1867 in Harford County, Maryland, the Hosanna School, also known as the Berkley School, was created two years following the establishment of the U.S. Freedman’s Bureau that was designed to provide aid to … Read MoreThe Hosanna School (1867– )
The “Bordentown School,” founded in 1886 in Bordentown, New Jersey, began as a self-sustaining, co-educational, vocational school in a two-story residence in Bordentown, New Jersey. Originally established as a private institution by Rev. Walter A. Rice, a college-educated former slave and minister with the African … Read MoreThe Bordentown School (1886-1955)
The Piney Woods School is a small, private, historically African-American boarding school in rural Mississippi. It serves approximately 300 students in grades 9 through 12. In 1909, Dr. Laurence C. Jones founded the school to provide educational opportunities for the area’s poor rural black children. … Read MorePiney Woods School (1909- )
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School was established in 1870 as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth with 45 students and one teacher, Emma J. Hutchins, to provide secondary education for the city’s African American children after efforts to integrate schools in Washington, D.C. failed. … Read MorePaul Laurence Dunbar High School (1870- )
