M Street High School, 128 M Street, NW
M Street was such a prestigious public school that many families moved to the area just for the opportunity to send their children here. M Street students regularly outscored their white counterparts on standardized tests, and most teachers had advanced degrees. From its founding in 1870 until it was integrated in 1955, this was widely considered the best public high school for African-Americans in the U.S.
M Street High School was famous for its high academic standards, and for instilling students with individual and racial pride. For generations, the school produced the largest number of college-bound African-American graduates in the nation.
The school facilities were minimal: there was no gymnasium for physical education, inferior science laboratories, not even a yard outside its doors. Overcrowding was a constant problem. What made the school great was not its building or equipment, but its faculty. Past Principals include: Richard T. Greener, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard; Mary Jane Patterson, the first African-American woman to earn a college degree; Francis Cardozo Sr., who instituted the school's classical curriculum, with courses in Latin and Greek; Edward Christopher Williams, the first African-American professional librarian; Robert Terrell; and Anna J. Cooper. Graduates include: Benjamin O. Davis, the first African-American U.S. General; William H. Hastie, the first African-American Federal judge; Robert C. Weaver, the first African-American cabinet member; Dr. Charles Drew, discoverer of blood plasma; Sterling A. Brown, D.C.'s first Poet Laureate; Jean Toomer, author of one of the earliest masterpieces of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane; jazz musician Billy Taylor; Rayford Logan, historian and chief advisor to the NAACP on international affairs in the 1940s; and Edward W. Brooke, the first post-Reconstruction African-American Senator.
M Street High School moved to a building on the west side of First Street, between N and O Streets NW, in 1916, and changed its name to honor the poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The current Dunbar High School building (at 1301 New Jersey Ave. NW) was constructed in 1977.
Dunbar High today is 98% African-American. But despite its eminent history, Dunbar suffers from many of the problems of urban schools, including violence, drug use, and a high drop-out rate. According to statistics provided by the D.C. Public Schools, in 2009, only 19% of students were proficient in Reading and 25% proficient in mathematics.
Spencer Crew, the first African-American Director of the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History, wrote in an essay in Washington Odyssey: A Multicultural History of the Nation's Capital about the "paradox" of comparing segregated schools with today's schools, and suggested one major reason for the change: "In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—before they were overwhelmed with more children than they could comfortably educate in an era of diminishing resources...separate schools benefited from the racial segregation that prevented many African-Americans with advanced degrees from finding professional work. In 1921 three of Dunbar High School's female teachers held doctorate degrees."
The building is now the Perry School Community Services Center.