Frederick Douglass High School, established in 1883, is an American public high school in the Baltimore City Public Schools district. Originally named the Colored High and Training School, Douglass is the second-oldest U.S. high school created specifically for African American students. Prior to desegregation, Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School were the only two high schools in Baltimore that admitted African-American students, with Douglass serving students from West Baltimore and Dunbar serving students from East Baltimore.
Former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) is one of Douglass's most notable alumni. After graduating from Douglass in 1926, Marshall went on to college and law school, passing the bar and becoming a lawyer. Representing the NAACP, he successfully challenged school segregation in the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Supreme Court ruled that segregated, separate but equal, in public education was unconstitutional because it could never truly be equal.
Due to residential segregation and changes in the demographics of Baltimore, the overwhelming majority of students at Douglass were African American and many were poor. It was one of the eleven lowest performing schools in the state of Maryland.
History
Named the "Colored High and Training School," Douglass was founded in 1883 for black students in Baltimore, as the school system was racially segregated. Six years later it moved to a site on East Saratoga Street near St. Paul Street (now developed as present-day "Preston Gardens" terraces, named for the former mayor in the five city blocks - north to south - from East Centre Street to East Lexington Streets). This was near and only a few blocks away to the northwest from the former Douglass Institute of 1865 and previous Newton University buildings dating from the 1840s on East Lexington Street (on the north side - between North Calvert Street and North Street [now Guilford Avenue]) which famed Frederick Douglass (1808-1895), who lived in this city during the 1830s, spoke at its dedication. The new high school for young Black Baltimoreans was the only one for African-Americans students in the City of Baltimore for three decades until Paul Laurence Dunbar High School was built and opened in 1931 on North Caroline Street (off Orleans Street) as a junior-senior high school in East Baltimore. At the time, there was also emphasis on training for industrial jobs.
On June 22, 1894, a year before his death, Frederick Douglass gave a commencement address at what would become a namesake school, saying:
"The colored people of this country have, I think, made a great mistake, of late, in saying so much of race and color as a basis of their claims to justice, and as the chief motive of their efforts and action. I have always attached more importance to manhood than to mere identity with any variety of the human family..." "We should never forget that the ablest and most eloquent voices ever raised in behalf of the black man's cause were the voices of white men. Not for race, not for color, but for men and for manhood they labored, fought, and died. Away, then, with the nonsense that a man must be black to be true to the rights of black men."
In 1900, the high and technical school moved from East Saratoga Street near St. Paul Street to a building in the northwest city on the corner of Dolphin Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
In 1900, the Baltimore City Public Schools system had initiated a one-year training course for African-American elementary school teachers, later known as Coppin State University, an HBCU Historically Black Colleges and Universities was founded at Douglass High School as a normal school (earlier name for a teachers' training school). In 1907, Coppin was appointed its own principal and formally separated from the high school. By 1938, Coppin had developed a four-year curriculum and the college began to grant Bachelor of Science degrees.
The high school moved in 1925 to its third location, a new building specifically designed for the high school was constructed of red brick and limestone trim, in the English Tudor / Jacobethan style, on the intersection at Calhoun and Baker Streets, but without a surrounding campus but facing directly on surrounding sidewalks. The new building was dedicated as "Frederick Douglass High School", the school had been using the new name for at least two years previously. For the first time in Baltimore, black students had a gymnasium, a library, and cafeteria.