Booker T. Washington High School

The school's first home was a building of 1893. J. A. Tempest designed it for about $30,150: three stories, ten rooms and a bell tower at San Felipe and Frederick. In 1918 John L. Blount came to teach mechanical drawing; in the early 1920s he drew the first unit of Bethel Baptist. Principal Arthur L. Huckaby led the move to 39th Street on January 26, 1959. Franklin D. Wesley took over in September 1965 and stayed forty years, holding, the school says, that a busy student is a happy one.

What the plaque says

Booker T. Washington High School Booker T. Washington High School, the first high school in Houston open to African Americans, was founded in 1893 as Colored High School, and was located in the Fourth Ward on San Felipe Street (now West Dallas Street). It served as the only high school for African American students until Yates Colored High School (Now Jack Yates High School) opened in 1926. Charles H. Atherton was the school's firs principal, a position he held until 1912. Courses taught at the school include English, Latin, mathematics, science and history. By 1896, Wright Mungin completed the coursework necessary to become the first graduate of Colored High School. The colored branch of the Carnegie Library was opened to the public inside the school in May 1909, establishing Houston's first library accessible to African Americans. Wiley College in Marshall, Texas established an extension branch at Colored High in 1925 and moved it to Yates High after one year. Houston based successors evolved into Texas State University for Negroes in 1947, then Texas Southern University in 1951. A major campus renovation was completed in 1927, and in the same year the school was renamed in honor of African American Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute. Population shifts led to relocation of the school in 1959to a new campus at 39th and Yale Streets, in the historic African American Independence Heights community. During the process of integration Washington High School was awarded the Houston Independent School District's first Magnet program in 1974, and the "High School for Engineering Professions" continues today as an important part of the school's curriculum. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 4.6 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 18 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 19 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 19 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.

More markers nearby

• Sampson Masonic Lodge No. 231 A. F. & A. M. — steps away
• Lynch's Ferry — 1.7 mi
• White Cemetery — 2.9 mi
• Hannah Este Burnet — 3.1 mi