Douglass and Dunbar High Schools

Dunbar High School

By Kenneth Griffin

At one time, if you were an African American growing up in Baltimore and you attended a public high school you only had one option and that was Frederick Douglass High School. Or, as Delma May Gordon, one of 52 students in the Class of 1940, the first to graduate Dunbar, stated when it was time for her to go to school, she had two choices, she could travel across town on the no. 21 streetcar to Frederick Douglass or she could drop out.¹ This changed in 1934 when Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School opened on Caroline and McElderry streets. Having only one African American public high school presented problems for people, especially people who lived on the other side of the city. According to Gordon, “[a] lot of people couldn’t afford the carfare and lunch money every day to send their kids to Douglass. It was insane to only have one black high school in Baltimore City.”² This “insanity” could be backed up by looking at 1940 public school records where it was recorded that “nearly half of Baltimore’s 49,470 elementary school students were black, but less than one-fourth of the city’s high school students were black.”³

From the start, Dunbar established itself as a good school. Its academics, administration and teaching staff were excellent. Its first principal, from 1937-1949, was Carrington L. Davis, who was a Harvard graduate.⁴ Some teachers were graduates of Brown University, and even the daughter of W.E. B. DuBois, Yolande DuBois Williams, taught English at Dunbar.⁵

Dunbar staff taught Shakespeare, Thackeray and Milton. They gave students books to read outside the curriculum to challenge them. Teachers were like mentors to the students. Music teacher Georgeanna McMechen Chester took a group of students to see a performance of “Faust” because she felt that black youngsters should be acquainted with great music.⁶

This high level of instruction and staff interest may have led to the Dunbar student body and alumni’s quest to build a new school and in participating in protests to challenge and change Baltimore City segregation laws and policies.

The call for a new school arose in 1965 because the conditions on which the school thrived in the late 1930s and early 1940s began to change. For instance, at that time, “Dunbar was a terrible place. Crowding and inadequate staff, combined with a rigid, conventional curriculum, encouraged discouragement. Students could see no reason for staying in school.”⁷

These conditions led to civil rights groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), neighborhood groups, staff and students at the school to protest how the neighborhood was getting more and more segregated and the people in the neighborhood were getting poorer and poorer.⁸

James Griffin, former president of the Baltimore chapter of CORE and a Dunbar graduate, tells how CORE became involved with the Dunbar situation, “We set up a CORE office within a mile of Dunbar. The students and some teachers heard about us and they came to us for help. They came to us because they lacked books, they lacked an adequate curriculum and lack of facilities.”⁹

Nothing concrete happened to Dunbar but in 1968 again community pressure from CORE, staff and students of Dunbar and the neighborhood led to meetings and putting public pressure on the Board of Education at school board meetings. The main complaints were about the poor condition of the school, its lack of athletic facilities, and the curriculum.¹⁰

James Griffin remembers that when he attended Dunbar as a student and participated on their track and football teams that, “we didn’t have a track or football field. We had to go to Clifton Park to practice. That was a daily thing.¹¹

One event that showed the dedication of the community, CORE and Dunbar students and staff was the day when CORE led a take-over of the 25th street headquarters of the school board in 1965. James Griffin explains, “We staged a historic sit-in on 25th street at the headquarters of the school board. We marched there first but we didn’t get any satisfaction from the superintendent or anyone else in charge so we staged a 26-hour sit-in. We had the whole city shook up and we were arrested as a result but we didn’t get the new Dunbar at that time. Students were arrested with us.”¹²

This example of organizing to attain a positive result for not only Dunbar students but for all citizens of Baltimore was not unique to this one situation. On Friday, June 17, 1960 at 4:¹⁵ p.m. a group of about eighteen African Americans entered Hooper’s restaurant in downtown Baltimore. This restaurant refused to serve African Americans, so a group of Dunbar students and area college students attempted to integrate Hooper’s.¹³

One of the people to integrate Hooper’s was Robert Bell, a sixteen-year-old student body president from Dunbar High School who went on to become the first African American to be Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals in Maryland. Bell had recruited a busload of Dunbar students to join the sit-in with students from Morgan State.¹⁴ Bell worked with John R. Quarles, a twenty-eight year old student at Morgan State College and a member of the Civic Interest Group (CIG). The students were arrested when they refused to leave and at the trial the prosecutor James W. Murphy, asked Quarles why the students refused to leave Hooper’s. Quarles said, “We were in hopes that Mr. (G. Carroll) Hooper would change his policy and serve us.”¹⁵ The students’ attorney, Robert Watts, asked why students risked arrest, to which Quarles responded, “I think arrest is a small price to pay for your freedom as a human being.”¹⁶

The stories of Bell and Griffin are just two examples of the many Dunbar students, teachers, parents and community members who have shaped the legacy of Dunbar High School. Their example of dedication has led to opportunities for future Dunbar students. The lasting Dunbar legacy of community involvement may be one reason why this school continues to attract opportunities for its students. Dunbar has a history of working with Johns Hopkins University to try and create programs to “strengthen Dunbar’s curriculum for advanced students and [establish] an advisory board similar to that of other citywide enrollment high schools” like Baltimore Polytechnic and Baltimore City College.¹⁷

The concerns, particularly the one about the neighborhood becoming more segregated, that incited protest in 1965 and 1968 were still valid in 1985. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, “[t]he citywide concept was begun over a decade ago in part to attract white students to the predominantly black school in East Baltimore. But the concept never worked, said Dunbar Principal Elzee Gladden, and the school currently enrolls only one white student.”¹⁸ This partnership with Hopkins has continued to this day.

Dunbar High School has a rich history of community involvement. Its role in being the second school for African Americans was vital in its early years. It offered a quality education to many who didn’t have that opportunity until this school was created. Its students played a role in desegregating downtown, it created a basketball dynasty that still commands respect today, and it has always had a committed group of people dedicated to fight to try and make Dunbar an elite public high school.

Douglass High School

By Mandela Brown

Frederick Douglass High School has a rich history in Baltimore. It was first named Old Colored High School and was founded in 1883 and was named Old Colored High School from 1883 until 1925.¹ Old Colored High existed for decades along with Washington D.C. Dunbar High School as major institutions for educating African Americans. In 1901, the school moved from Saratoga Street near Charles Street, where it had been housed since 1889, to a building on the corner of Dolphin Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.² At the same time, the responsibility of training teachers was added; this dual function was retained until 1901.

Early in the 1920s, a new site was selected at Calhoun and Baker Streets for a new building; it was named Frederick Douglass, after the famous orator, anti-slavery activist, and diplomat. In 1925 the first class entered the new institution and for the first time, the newly accredited high school enjoyed such facilities as a gymnasium, a library, and a cafeteria.³

In the first century of its existence Douglass High School produced distinguished alumni. Several civil rights leaders attended Douglass including Clarence M. Mitchell, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson and Kwesi Mfume. Douglass also produced national entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, Ethel Ennis and opera star Veronica Tyler. In addition, Douglass produced its most famous graduate in Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Other graduates of Douglass include Afro-American editor Carl Murphy, former state senator Verda Welcome, who was the first African-American woman to serve as a state senator in the Maryland legislature, and Judges Robert Watts and George Ressel.⁴

One possibility of why Douglass produced such an elite alumni may be because of how disciplined the school was. One of Douglass’s graduates, Janice Woolridge, recalled in an interview with a Johns Hopkins University student how strictly disciplined it was when she was there:
We couldn’t chew gum or anything like that. And we couldn’t talk in line and the boys used to make eyes at me. That was my main problem, I think. I remember one boy touched my arm in line: he was put out of school for that. That’s the way it worked. It ended up a very exclusive school. We did all the operettas; one teacher taught us social graces; like a finishing school. The teachers were from the big colleges so we also had French, Spanish and Latin.⁵

Not all of Douglass’s graduates became famous but many of them became successful in a variety of careers. For instance, “[d]uring the first decades after the school’s founding, one third of Douglass graduates went on to college or normal school. Thousands of Baltimore’s teachers, salespeople, business owners, clerical workers, industrial employees, and governmental officials received their education at Douglass.”⁶

Over the years, as the original school closed in 1954 and the school moved to its current site by Coppin State University on Gwynns Falls Parkway, Douglass has struggled. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, “[t]est scores are low. The building needs repairs. Alumni complain that many of today’s students seem not to recognize the community jewel Douglass was. Or worse, they don’t care.”⁷

Test scores and attitudes like these are not what older Douglass alums remember about Douglass High. Barbara Shaffey, a graduate of the class of 1943, said, “Our aim was always to be better. In the whole world, we had to be better. Our motto was, ‘Pride, Dignity and Excellence.’ And we believed that with every fiber of our being. And we acted it out every day.”⁸
One factor that may have hurt Douglass, ironically, was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954. This court case was supposed to improve education for all races but some people in Baltimore feel like it hurt the African American community. The Rev. Vernon Dobson, a 1941 graduate of Douglass and pastor of Union Baptist Church in West Baltimore, said, “Desegregation destroyed us.”⁹ In addition Richard Holley, class of 1953 alumnus and chairmen of the Douglass High School Alumni Association, stated, “We sent our best and brightest to Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, and City and Western. We sent them to say, ‘Blacks can learn just as well as others’. And we sent our teachers right along with them. We replaced (racial) segregation with intellectual segregation. And so we have this two-tracked system now.”¹⁰
The question of whether or not Douglass is currently struggling or improving is a matter of debate. But one thing that is not a debate is the pride and success left by the people who attended Douglass High School. From attorneys, to Supreme Court Justices, to our current mayor Sheila Dixon, the first African American mayor of Baltimore to teachers and construction workers, the alumni of Douglass High School have offered much to people all over the country.