The Legacy of Dunbar: America's First Black Public High School Upgraded

Washington, DC's Dunbar High School, despite being racially segregated and at the mercy of racist congressmen, was an academically elite public school in the first half of the 20th century. The local community rallied for the cause of educating its children, and the school attracted an exceptional faculty, including the first Black Harvard graduate as an early principal, teachers with graduate degrees, and several with PhDs - remarkable achievements given the Jim Crow laws of the time. Over the school's first 80 years, these teachers developed generations of highly educated, high-achieving African Americans, including groundbreakers such as the first Black member of a presidential cabinet, the first Black graduate of the US Naval Academy, the first Black army general, the creator of the modern blood bank, the first Black state attorney general, the legal mastermind behind school desegregation, and hundreds of educators. By the 1950s, Dunbar High School was sending 80 percent of its students to college. Unfortunately, like many urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students today struggle with reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart, whose parents were both Dunbar graduates, tells the story of the school's rise, fall, and path toward resurgence as it looks to reopen its new, state-of-the-art campus in the fall of 2013.

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