Booker T. Washington Senior High School

Booker T. Washington Elementary-Junior-Senior High School opened its doors in February, 1927, as the first public high school to provide a 12th grade education for Black students in Miami. The original opening was delayed by both a bombing during construction as well as a devastating hurricane. In spite of a tumultuous start, the school served students from West Palm Beach to Key West, and became a symbol of high achievement, success, community, and civic service.

Excerpt from the Miami Herald article, “Booker T. Washington at 90: Miami’s first high school ‘free to all black children,” by Dorothy Jenkins Fields:

“Miami-Dade County’s first senior high school, “free to all black children,” was Booker T. Washington Junior-Senior High. It opened the 1926-1927 school year and is the subject of this column.

Educating children was important in the black community from the time black men stood as incorporators for Miami to become a city on July 28, 1896. During the early 1920s, pioneer businessman D. A. Dorsey, Miami’s first black millionaire, was in charge of education for black children. He hired the teachers and led the community’s efforts for a junior-senior high school. After Dorsey’s death, Dr. William A Chapman Sr., a medical doctor, became chairman of the advisory board.

The name chosen for the school, Booker T. Washington, honors a man whose life’s work was dedicated to educating black children. A former slave (1856-1915), he gained his freedom and was educated at Hampton Institute. Later, he founded Tuskegee Institute and The National Negro Business League.

Prior to the opening of Booker T Washington, Black children, after completing eighth grade, were expected to get jobs and work full time. Resistance to the notion that Black children did not need a high school diploma was intense and constant. The Black community encouraged the administration at Dunbar, a pioneer elementary school also located in Overtown, to add a grade each year up to 10th grade without approval from the county board.

This was common practice throughout the south. James Weldon Jonson, an educator, lawyer, diplomat and composer of the “Negro National Anthem” titled “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” writes about being principal of Stanton Elementary in Jacksonville. On his own, by adding a grade each year—without approval — he converted Stanton into a senior high school for black children to earn a high school diploma.

In Miami, Black parents, mostly laborers and washer women, so determined for their children to be educated sent them away to boarding schools. From 7th to 12th grades, Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) provided high school programs for black children throughout the South who lived in areas similar to Miami-Dade County where no public high school was available.

Finally, during Miami’s real estate boom, a public senior high school for Black children was built. However, plans to open it were delayed because of damage by both unnatural and natural forces, a bomb and a hurricane.

Pioneers including the late Dorothy Graham, Elry Sands and Stanley Newbold Sr. spoke often about the bombing and the 1926 storm. They remembered that Miami was devastated when the hurricane blew roof tops off houses, lifted wooden houses off cement blocks, and caused additional damage to the new school.

Opening the building was delayed until the following year, February 1927. Then, how proud the students were to march from Dunbar, 505 NW 20th St. to Booker T., 1200 NW Sixth Ave.

The first senior high class graduated in 1928.”

References: 

www.btwtornadoes.org

Catalyst Storymap

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