African American Schools
Tour Description
Explore the evolution of African American education and school architecture in Washington by visiting ten schoolhouses. The tour begins with schools constructed after emancipation and concludes with a school that is nationally significant for its role in the U.S. Supreme Court case Bolling v. Sharpe, which was decided the same day as the four public school desegregation cases combined in Brown v. Board of Education.
This driving tour covers 15 miles and will take approximately 90 minutes to complete.
Locations for Tour
Military Road School
Established in 1864 to educate free people of color, the Military Road School was formerly located on Military Road, which connected DC’s Civil War forts. In particular, the Military Road School was near Fort Stevens barracks, where many people of…
Miner Normal School
Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), a pioneer for Black female education, established the “Normal School for Colored Girls,” also known as the “Miner School for Girls” in 1851; its eventual large, three-story, symmetrically-massed Colonial Revival brick…
Central High School (Cardozo Senior High School)
Built between 1914 and 1916, Cardozo High School is the work of William B. Ittner, a nationally prominent school architect from St. Louis. The Elizabethan-style building and athletic facilities were constructed on an on extraordinary terraced and…
Charles Sumner School
The Sumner School is one of three post-Civil War black schools in DC and is named in honor of Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts Senator and ardent abolitionist who attempted, unsuccessfully, to ban segregated schools and public facilities in the city.…
Thaddeus Stevens School
Built in 1868, enlarged in 1885 and partially rebuilt and enlarged between 1895 and 1896, Stevens School is one of the oldest surviving elementary school buildings in the District of Columbia. Named after Pennsylvania Congressman and abolitionist…
M Street High School (Perry School)
Founded in 1870 as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, M Street High School navigated multiple makeshift locations until 1890 when Congress earmarked $112,000 for the construction of a dedicated building. The school ultimately found its…
Armstrong Manual Training School
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Armstrong Manual Training School and M Street High School were the only two high schools in DC that admitted black students. From its founding, Armstrong operated as an important institution and symbol for…
Alexander Crummell School
The Alexander Crummell School, built between 1910 and 1911, is located in Ivy City. Municipal Architect Snowden Ashford designed the building in 1910 in a personalized Renaissance style, and construction was carried out the following year by Allan T.…
Joel Elias Spingarn Senior High School
Built between 1951 and 1952, Spingarn High School was constructed for the education of African American students, meant to relieve the overcrowding of the other segregated high schools and had been planned for that purpose since the late 1930s.…
John Philip Sousa Junior High School
John Philip Sousa Junior High (now Middle) School, built in 1950, stands as a symbol of the lengthy conflict over the desegregation of public schools and the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. The school is nationally significant for its…