https://www.atlantapublicschools.us/atlantaps

apshistory, 130 Trinity Avenue, SW, Atlanta, GA (2026)

05/27/2022

Repost from
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leg·a·cy
/ˈleɡəsē/
adj: an applicant to a particular institution who is regarded preferentially because a parent or other relative attended the same institution.

One of the MANY things that is special about Booker T. Washington High School is that it is a public institution where at least FIVE (5) GENERATIONS of a single family could have graduated from this school.

Recently, we conducted interviews with a few of the recently graduated legacies and their alumni parents; two of whom are also legacies of our historic institution. Here’s a snippet of these conversations.

04/04/2022

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”.

03/16/2022

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

03/08/2022

Happy International Women’s Day from the 1934 Bolton School Girls basketball team 🏀

02/26/2022

Ashby Street School/E.R. Carter:

Ashby Street School opened in 1911 as an all-white school in the historic Washington Heights Neighborhood. Initially designed with three separate subdivision plats, one of these plats would ultimately become Atlanta’s first planned black neighborhood. As white developers abandoned the three remaining plats they would ultimately be taken over by Heman Perry, a 20th-century black developer, owner of the Standard Life Insurance Company of Atlanta. As the West-End neighborhood changed in demographics due to the 1917 Great Fire, white student enrollment changed dramatically by 1918. Due to a declining enrollment in white students, the school board voted to close Ashby Street School and reopen as a “school for Negroes,” by July of 1919.

The first principal of new African-American school would be H.L. Green, followed by Mrs. Harriet Randolph Bailey. In addition to traditional grammar school classes, Ashby Street School also provided schooling for the deaf community as well.

Late 1920’s Ashby Street School become the largest school African-American students in the Atlanta Public School System. As segregation caused African-American’s to have very few options in terms of places to live, the influx of African-American’s caused a storm of hateful actions by neighboring whites and the Ku Klux Klan. The K*K would firebomb Ashby Street School in 1922 with another mysterious fire gutting the building in 1926. Ashby Street School would be rebuilt in 1928 using the remaining walls that survived the 1926 fire.

Ashby Street School was renamed as E.R. Carter in 1944 after the cherished Atlanta Reverend, E.R. Carter who presided over Friendship Baptist

The school remained open until 1994 when it finally shuttered its doors. As of 2015, the abandoned school has been converted into a multi-million dollar Families First Resource Center.

Research: Forgotten APS Schools – Adair to Ashby Street
2nd 📸

02/25/2022

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.

❤️💚🖤

02/25/2022

WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL: Repost from
•
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.

❤️💚🖤

02/22/2022

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.

02/18/2022

It’s hard to imagine that the heart of the city today were once rural, county property. These Fulton County schools would eventually become APS schools when the area were annexed. One of these ‘suburban’ schools was Battle Hill, built c. 1897.

02/12/2022

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).

02/11/2022

ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOL HISTORY shared by Dr. Coaxum-Young
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At the start of Atlanta’s desegregation process, Black students had to apply to be considered to attend White schools (Kruse, 2007). The Black applicants participated in a rigorous process that included intelligence tests, applications, and interviews with the school board. Out of 132 students, ten were chosen to integrate four of Atlanta’s all White high schools (Corson, n.d.). One of the students opted not to transfer, thus nine Black students remained to integrate the 102,000 student body (Bayor, 1996; Research Atlanta, 1992).

Pictured here- The Atlanta 9! Bravery looks like this in print. William Hartsfield ensured Atlanta's integration of schools would be violence free. While there were threats, insults and hardships endured by the integrators, this success built Atlanta Public Schools into the welcoming and diverse district it is today.

02/10/2022

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. attended 1st and 2nd grade at the Younge Street School!

To ensure a 1910 bond issue would pass, $38,200 was included for Black school slated for 4th ward (since it had the most Black voters).

The City purchased land from Bishop Henry M. Turner and the school was completed in 1911.

In the first year, Selena Sloan Butler established the country’s first “Colored Parents and Teachers Unit”. In 1955, it was to be renamed to honor her, but rules stated it could not be named for a living person, so they named it after her husband, H.R. Butler.

The school closed in 1979 and became community center. It was later demolished and the adjacent land is Selena Sloan Butler Park.

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