apshistory

Repost from
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The English Avenue school was built in 1911, and just months later was in a state of disrepair. The City had tried to build several school buildings as cheaply as possible, and plaster walls and ceilings inside were falling in chunks, which teachers and students barely escaped falling over their heads. Over the next two decades, the building would be expanded to accommodate over-crowding and safety concerns.

Originally an all-white school, after demographics changed during the 50s, the Board of Education voted to make it to an all-Black school. In December of 1960, 2,000 local residents met in the auditorium to pray before walking in a segregation protest march. The following day, the school was bombed. It is described as “the worst racially-motivated bombings in the city of Atlanta”.

Thomas Heathe Slater School Class of 1954
Principal AJ Lewis II
Atlanta GA

WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL: Repost from
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This famous statue sculpted by Charles Keck, was commissioned by Principal Charles Lincoln Harper for the students and community of Booker T Washington High School. The statue is positioned at the bottom of the steps entering the school. The statue titled: Lifting The Veil of Ignorance, is a depiction of Booker T. Washington uncovering the eyes of a slave. The slave holding a book( promotion of education), is seated on a plow and anvil (which symbolizes work on farms and fields using the tools of agriculture). A significant feature of the statue is the placement of Booker T. Washington's hands. Charles Keck strategically placed one hand over the veil (as a symbol of newness) while he raised the other hand slightly in a pointed position(a symbol of progress). The front of the statue reads: He lifted the veil of ignorance and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.

The original statue was unveiled and dedicated in the center of campus on the grounds of Tuskegee University in 1922. Principal Charles Lincoln Harper would later have the only replica of the famous statue erected on the campus of Atlanta's first public high school for black students, in 1927.

❤️💚🖤

Helen Ira Jarrell was born in 1896 and began her career as elementary schoolteacher in Atlanta in 1916. She moved on to senior teacher (1930), principal (1934), secretary of the Atlanta Public School Teachers' Association (1929), member of executive board, 1st vice president, delegate to Atlanta Federation of Trades, president of APSTA (1936) and then, in 1944, she became the first female superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools.

ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOL HISTORY Repost from
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This week we'll focus on the Atlanta 9. Much like the Little Rock 9, there were 10 black students .
(of 132 applicants) selected to integrate white high schools in APS on August 30, 1961. Four of the ten were students from Washington High School. Let's get to know the 4 this week.

As a brief review:
The first public high school in Atlanta Public Schools opened in 1872 (Boys High School a.k.a Boys and Girls High School a.k.a Grady High School a.k.a Midtown High School).
The first black public high in Atlanta Public Schools opened in 1924 (Booker T. Washington High School).
The first time Atlanta Public Schools integrated its schools is in 1961 (7 years after the historic Brown v. Board of Education case).