First Class

by Alison Stewart

  9. Samuel Yorke Atlee, History of the Public Schools of Washington City, D.C. (Washington, DC: M’Gill and Witherow, 1876), 1–2.

  10. J. Ormond Wilson, The Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1894—95 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 1,681.

  11. J. Ormond Wilson, Eighty Years of the Public Schools of Washington 1805—1885: Report of the Commission of Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 1,674.

  12. Ellen M. O’Connor, Myrtilla Miner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885), 12.

  13. O’Connor, Myrtilla Miner, 12.

  14. O’Connor, Myrtilla Miner, 13.

  15. Myrtilla Miner to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  16. Elijah Green, interviewed by Augustus Ladson, 156 Elizabeth Street, Charleston, South Carolina. Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves (Winston Salem, NC: John F. Blair Publisher, 1980), 65.

  17. Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  18. Myrtilla Miner to “Dear Friends,” 31 July 1851, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  19. W. H. Beecher, Letter to Solicit Funds, Reading, Mass., December 1865, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  20. O’Connor, Myrtilla Miner, 56.

  21. Myrtilla Miner Letter to Friends, 1852, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress.

  22. Letter to Myrtilla Miner from student Marietta Hill, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  23. Myrtilla Miner to friends, 1852, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  24. Reverend Wm. H. Beecher accounting records, May-July 1856, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  25. Myrtilla Miner Letter, 3 May 1854, Myrtilla Miner Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  26. Lester Wells, “Myrtilla Miner: A Paper Before the Madison Historical Society,” September 12, 1941, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  27. O’Connor, 121; “Wide Enough for Our Ambition: D.C.’s Segregated African-American Schools (1807–1954),” Humanities Council of Washington, DC, www.wdchumanities.org/bigreadexhibit/exhibits/show/dcsegregatedschools.

  28. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, “Myrtilla Miner,” www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/383669/Myrtilla-Miner.

  29. Miner Normal School, School Rules and Terms, Washington, DC, July 1, 1876.

  Chapter 3: The Law Giveth and the Law Taketh Away

  1. Letitia Brown and Elsie Lewis, “Washington in the New Era 1870–1970,” Publication of the Education Department of the Smithsonian, February 1972, 4.

  2. “Charles Sumner: A Featured Biography,” www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Featured_Bio_Sumner.htm.

  3. “The Old Senate Chamber: The Caning of Senator Sumner,” www.senate.gov/vtour/sumner.htm.

  4. Green, Secret City, 69.

  5. Donald Roe, “The Dual School System in the District of Columbia, 1862–1954: Origins, Problems and Protests,” Washington History, Fall/Winter 2004–2005.

  6. Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvements of Public Schools in Washington DC submitted June 13, 1870, Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1871.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Mary Gibson Brewer to Carter G. Woodson, 18 March 1935, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

  9. Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite 1880–1920 (Fayetteville: Arkansas University Press, 2000), 39–40.

  10. E. Delorus Preston Jr., “William Syphax, a Pioneer in Negro Education in the District of Columbia,” Journal of Negro History 20, no. 4 (October 1935): 448–76.

  11. Robert E. Lee House Arlington Memorial, “Pitcher,” www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/arho/exb/slavery/medium/ARHO6694_Pitcher.html.

  12. The Special Report of the Commissioner of Education, “The History of Schools for the Colored Population,” Volume 1, Part 1.Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1896.

  13. Inhabited Alleys in the District of Columbia and Housing of Unskilled. Hearing before A Subcommittee of the Committee on the District of Columbia, Washington DC, Government Printing Office, 1914.

  14. James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850–1972 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 14.

  15. Ibid., 149–50.

  16. Annual Report of the Colored Schools in Washington & Georgetown 1871—1872: George F.I. Cook Superintendent, January 23, 1873.

  17. Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).

  18. Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvements of Public Schools in Washington, DC, submitted June 13, 1870, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1871, 28.

  19. Report of the Commissioner of the District of Columbia for the Year End June 20, 1905, vol. IV, 71.

  20. Ibid., 372.

  21. Fourth Report of the Board of Trustees of Public Schools of the District of Columbia, 1878, Washington Gibson Brothers Printers.

  22. Allen Lessof and Cristof Mauch, Adolf Cluss, Architect: From Germany to America (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 151.

  23. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: A Century of Segregation, The Civil Rights Act Declared Unconstitutional, 2002, www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation2.html.

  24. Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: The Negro in American Life, The Nadir 1877–1901 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1954).

  25. Editorial, Washington Bee, December 18, 1886.

  26. Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 68.

  27. United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, “M Street School,” September 26, 1996, 3.

  Chapter 4: It’s the Principal

  1. Questionnaire: Negro College Graduates Individual Occupational History, Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Louise Daniel Hutchison, Anna J. Cooper: A Voice from the South (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1982), 1.

  4. Anna Julia Cooper, “Higher Education of Women,” A Voice from the South, 1890–91.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Questionnaire: Negro College Graduates Individual Occupational History, Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  7. Anna Julia Cooper letters, Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  8. George Jenifer, “The Myrtilla Miner Normal School,” Crisis, April 1917.

  9. Report of the Board of Education to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 1902–1903, 193.

  10. Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper (Oxford, England: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 20.

  11. Questionnaire: Negro College Graduates Individual Occupational History, Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  12. “Colored High School—Delay in Acting Upon Charges Unsatisfactory,” Washington Post, September 19, 1905.

  13. Editorial Page, Washington Times, June 26, 1902.

  14. Washington Times, September 21, 1902.

  15. District of Columbia Board of Education Notes, September 6, 1905.

  16. “Negroes on Race Question,” New York Times, September 27, 1903.

  17. “Colored High School—Delay in Acting Upon Charges Unsatisfactory,” Washington Post, September 19, 1905.

  18. Advertisement, Colored American, October 3, 1903.

  19. Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literar
y Societies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 157.

  20. “Colored High School—Delay in Acting Upon Charges Unsatisfactory,” Washington Post, September 19, 1905.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Anna Julia Cooper, “A Negro Dialect,” A Voice from the South, 1891.

  23. Mary Helen Washington, A Voice from the South, “Letter from Annette Easton to Leone Gabel, October 1, 1977,” Smith College archives.

  24. Cumming v. Board of Ed. of Richmond County, 175 U.S. 528, December 18, 1899.

  25. Minutes of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, March 1904.

  26. Report of hearings before the subcommittee on the several school bills relating to the reorganization of the schools of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, February 26-March 13, 1906.

  27. “Colored High School—Delay in Acting Upon Charges Unsatisfactory,” Washington Post, September 19, 1905.

  28. Louis Harlan and Raymond Smock, eds., The Booker T. Washington Papers (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977).

  29. “Director Hughes Heard,” Washington Post, September 23, 1905

  30. “President Resigns; Endowment Gone,” New York Times, April 29, 1910.

  31. Organic Act of June 20, 1906, Current School Board—34 Stat. 316, ch. 3446, The Basic Authority of the C Alain Locke Papers Box 1–1 Folder 45; Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  32. Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  33. Ibid.

  Chapter 5: Bricks and Mortarboards

  1. Hearing before the Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations for the District of Columbia, Appropriations Bill 1912 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913).

  2. Jacqueline Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital 1880–1920 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 89.

  3. Fourth Report of the Board of Trustees of Public Schools of the District of Columbia, 1878, Washington Gibson Brothers Printers.

  4. House Appropriations Bill 1906, 147.

  5. National Rifle Association of America, Annual Report 1908, 17.

  6. “Bride to Share in Oyster Wealth,” New York Times, April 26, 1921.

  7. Bulletin of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment, College Park Maryland, 1907, 234.

  8. “The Mansion at Strathmore, History & Architecture, www.strathmore.org/media/pdf/MansionHistory_final.pdf.

  9. “Ashford Criticizes Oyster,” Washington Herald, October 27, 1907.

  10. Minutes of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, May 7, 1913.

  11. Kimberly Prothro Williams, Schools for All: A History of DC Public School Buildings, 1804—1960 (Washington, DC: US Department of Interior, 2008).

  12. Hearing before the Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations for the District of Columbia, Appropriations Bill 1914 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913), 147.

  13. Minutes of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, October 20, 1908.

  14. Minutes of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, Entered in to the minutes a letter from Jay J. Morrow, October 30, 1908.

  15. “Hacker Mentioned for Ashford’s Job,” Washington Times, May 28, 1909.

  16. “Ashford in Alarm,” Washington Herald, January 18, 1910

  17. “Officials Endorsed by Trade Committee,” Washington Times, 1911.

  18. Hearing before the Select Committee of the United States Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Public School System, March 9, 1920, 1253.

  19. Marie Anderson Ittner, “William B. Ittner: His Service to American School Architecture,” American School Board Journal (January 1941): 1.

  20. Elizabeth Armstrong Hall, “Schools of Thought,” St. Louis, May 2005, 1.

  21. District of Columbia Board of Education Meeting Notes, vol. 6, 1912.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Hearing before the Select Committee of the United States Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Public School System, March 9, 1920, 1252.

  24. “Accepted Design for the New M Street High School,” Washington Star, March 28, 1914.

  25. Ibid.

  26. “Colored High School Goes to First Street,” Washington Star, April 29, 1911.

  27. Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park, Exhibit, “The Young Writer,” Dayton, Ohio.

  28. Paul Finkleman, ed., Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  29. “Wilbur and Orville Wright Timeline, The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wrighthtml/wrighttime.html.

  30. Marvin McFarland, ed., The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, vol. 2: 1906—1948 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1953), 696; Mary Kay Carson and Laura D’Argo, The Wright Brothers for Kids: How They Invented the Plane (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2003), 11.

  31. “Paul Laurence Dunbar: From the Academy of American Poets,” www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/302.

  32. Some news reports say 1,150; others say 999, and some say 1,175.

  33. Commissioners of the District of Columbia, Annual Report 1917, vol. 6, 267.

  34. His ex-wife Alice Dunbar Nelson attended as well.

  Chapter 6: Old School

  1. Class Notes, Liber Anni (Dunbar High School yearbook), 1923.

  2. Dunbar High School Student handbook, 1922, 1 Sumner School and Museum Archives.

  3. Garnet C. Wilkinson, M Street 1898, was principal from 1916–1922. He was promoted to assistant superintendent of schools.

  4. Dunbar High School Student Handbook, 1922, 3. Sumner School and Museum Archives.

  5. Mary Brewer, “The Budgeting of the Assignment” (address before Dunbar faculty), November 29, 1928.

  6. Otelia Cromwell, “A High School Generation, September 1921-June 1925, Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C.,” December 10, 1925, Table II.

  7. Dunbar High School Student Handbook, 1925, Sumner School and Museum Archives.

  8. “Cleanliness and Neatness,” Dunbar High School Student Handbook, September 1925, 81.

  9. Booker T. Washington, “Up from Slavery”: Booker T. was originally coined by General Armstrong.

  10. Allison Davis, Burleigh Gardner, and Mary Gardner, Deep South: A Social and Anthropological Study of Caste and Class, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), 16.

  11. “School Mourns Death of Assistant Principal,” Dunbar Newsreel, December 1948, 1.

  12. Courtland Milloy, “Dunbar Grads Still ‘Pluggin’ Away’; Class of 1925 Promises at Reunion to Keep Applying Lessons Learned,” Washington Post, June 24, 1985, C3.

  13. Mary Gibson Hundley Papers, 1897–1986, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

  14. “The Black Renaissance in Washington, DC; Jessie Redmon Fauset,” http://dclibrarylabs.org/blkren/bios/fausetjr.html.

  15. Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 520.

  16. ACHE TV interview program of Dr. Eva B. Dykes, Oakwood College, Papers of Eva B. Dykes, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

  17. DeWitt S. Williams, She Fulfilled the Impossible Dream: The Story of Eva B. Dykes (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1985), 15.

  18. Ibid, 37.

  19. “Dunbar Graduates Find Varied Work,” Washington Star, April 22, 1928.

  20. Sandra Fitzpatrick and Maria Goodwin, The Guide to Black Washington: Places and Events of Historical and Cultural Significance in the Nation’s Capital (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991), 109.

  21. “William Allison Davis:Psychologist, Social Anthropoligist, Author and Educator,” www.esperstamps.org/heritage/h17.htm.

  22. Dan MacGilvray, “A Brief History of the GPO—The Auto Age,” www.acces
s.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/history/macgilvray.html.

  23. John Davis Letter to Gordon Davis, Courtesy of the Davis Family private papers.

  24. Dewey & LeBoeuf went bankrupt in May 2012, and Gordon Davis became a partner at Venable.

  25. University of Chicago Centennial Catalogues, “Allison Davis-Education,” www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/centcat/fac/facch25_01.html.

  Chapter 7: Chromatics

  1. Jacqueline Trescott, “Too Good to Tear Down?” Washington Post, March 1975.

  2. Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (New York: Contemporary Books/McGraw-Hill, 2003), 9.

  3. George Johnson, “The Present Legal Status of the Negro Separate School,” Journal of Negro Education 16, no. 3 (Summer 1947), 288–89.

  4. Edward Christopher Williams, When Washington Was in Vogue: A Lost Novel of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Amistad-HarperCollins, 2004), 92.

  5. Ibid., 22.

  6. Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1948, 3.

  7. Ibid. 137.

  8. Minutes from the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, September 12, 1904.

  9. Daniel J. Sharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 137.

  10. “Court Must Draw the Color Line,” New York Times, June 3, 1910.

  11. Robert B. Jones, “Jean Toomer’s Life and Career,” American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  Chapter 8: Coming of Age

  1. Richard Seven, “Hazel Markel, 92; Distinguished Herself In Radio and Print Journalism,” Seattle Times, December 13, 1991.

  2. Kelly Quinn, Making Modern Homes: A History of Langston Terrace Dwellings, a New Deal Housing Program in Washington, D.C. (College Park, MD: University of Maryland Press, 2007), 169.

  3. Mary Gibson Hundley Papers, 1897–1986, Biographical sketch, Schlesinger Library, Institute, Harvard University.

  4. Letter from Dean of Admissions at Sarah Lawrence College to Mary Hundley, Mary Gibson Hundley Papers, 1897–1986, Biographical sketch, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

  5. “Court Asked to Evict Teachers,” Afro American, April 19, 1941, 24.