First Class

by Alison Stewart

  There were 110 rooms total: 35 classrooms, a library that could hold 1,400 volumes and accommodate 125 students at a time, a printing press valued at $4,000, a small cafeteria, and a greenhouse. The auditorium could seat 1,500 and featured an enormous pipe organ. In the basement were chemistry and biology labs, a pool, boys’ and girls’ gyms, a cafeteria with a working kitchen, and a rifle range.

  Principal Garnet C. Wilkinson (M Street, 1898; Oberlin; Howard Law School) presided over the official dedication of the school. It took so long to plan that it didn’t happen until the following year. The celebration was elaborate, a weeklong event from Monday, January 15, to Friday, January 19, 1917. The events lasted from morning until night. Daylong exhibitions featured sports and military drills. The students presented organ and recital pieces by Schubert and Schumann. In attendance at the nightly assemblies were both white and colored Washingtonians—judges, politicians, and local activists among them. W. E. B Du Bois was slated to speak but canceled at the last minute due to health issues. Taking up the mantle of the moral and intellectual conscience during this week of pageantry was civil rights leader Nannie Helen Burroughs, who had graduated from M Street with honors in 1896. The religious leader and educator who founded a training school for women and girls told the audience,

  Lift up the race until it touches the sunlight of Almighty God, building a service and civilization for God and humanity…. The world would lull to sleep if it could. I urge teachers and preachers to work to keep awake the manhood and womanhood of the Negro…. In my judgment you have a fine opportunity for the education of your children as is afforded in the breadth and length of this land whether they be white, colored, or any other race.

  But the real star of the event was none other than seventy-eight-year-old Matilda Dunbar, the beloved mother of the famous poet, who reminded everyone of how the school had come to be.34 Colored Washingtonians kept plugging away until they got their own full-fledged high school.

  When the mainstream Washington Times covered the opening day of Dunbar High School, the headline read NEW DUNBAR SCHOOL: UNIQUE INSTITUTION—THE LARGEST AND MOST UP TO DATE FOR COLORED PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES. The NAACP magazine, The Crisis, ran the story with a caption that proclaimed Dunbar THE GREATEST NEGRO HIGH SCHOOL IN THE WORLD.

  Dunbar High School.

  Courtesy of Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives

  6 OLD SCHOOL

  IT BECAME TRADITION TO usher incoming students into the auditorium on the first day of classes for a formal welcome to Dunbar High School. The returning upperclassmen took their place in the balcony to get a good vantage point to check out the newbies. The freshmen arrived having heard rumors of initiations—nothing too evil, just upperclassmen giving the young ones wrong directions and a verbal lick here and there. As one young boy scribbled in his yearbook, “It will only be a few weeks of torture, but next year we will be the torturers.”1

  Few qualifications determined who could attend Dunbar: a student had to live in the District, could not have a communicable disease, and had to pass the eighth-grade exit exam. In order to enroll from outside the District, students had to pass a high school entrance exam.2 It was a fairly democratic process, but the democracy ended at the door of Dunbar. Inside Dunbar, the ground rules and expectations were laid out the first day. Principal Walter Smith, who led Dunbar for twenty-two years, was known to look over his little round glasses, which were as smooth and round as his pate, as he spoke.3 He laid down the law the first week.

  The contribution which DUNBAR will make to your development will be in furthering your progress along the lines already started, and aid in the opening up of new fields for new powers and aspirations which will be awakened with the coming years. Here you will learn to live in accord with one another in a large community, doing your part well that all may be well. You will learn to know that the good leader is he who first was a good follower. You will learn that the good of all is the highest good, superior to the good of one or a few. Happy will you be if you seek always to do your part, great or small, in the best way you can. You will be trained in much that the world counts as worthwhile. Yours will meet with many of the world’s best minds, and receive inspiration and growth by contact. If you have improved your opportunities while here, while here you will go forth strengthened in mind, morals, and body, well prepared to do that part of the world’s work which will be your share.

  As for the students transferring in, part of the surge of Great Migration and those who moved expressly to DC to take advantage of Dunbar, the school administration had this advice:

  There are many things which will seem strange to you here at Dunbar…. May you find here the greatest aid and encouragement in your efforts and may you know the happiness that comes from doing your best in your lessons and in your behavior…. You must have a desire to live up to the highest and best ideals of Dunbar scholarship and deportment.4

  The message was that Dunbar stood for something. Dunbar proved that Negroes were able to do anything that anybody else could do, and do it as well or better.

  Every moment of the first school day was choreographed. Students were given instructions on exactly how to exit the auditorium. Students were to go through the doors immediately, emptying seats from the rear three rows at a time (not two—three!), keep to the right in the halls, and move rapidly. Students were instructed to walk along halls and up and down stairs two abreast at all times (not three—two!), and students were not to walk arm in arm or with arms around one another. Students were not to loiter, but were not to rush either. Instead, they were instructed to keep a “military cadence.”

  The students who could afford to and didn’t have to work every day after school were encouraged to join clubs. There was the glee club and the debating society. There were academic clubs, such as the biological club, which was devoted to nature and the sciences. There were social clubs like the Fleur De Lis Club, established in 1904, which focused on literary works and school spirit. The Rex Club—rex meaning “king” in Latin—was a young men’s group devoted to being manly. The club soon took on the job of helping to patrol the halls and keep the overcrowded facility in order.

  The Dunbar sports teams were originally the Poets; they later became the Crimson Tide.

  Courtesy of the Historical Society of Washington, DC

  And there were sports. The fairly good-sized football and basketball teams went by the moniker the Poets, a name that seemed especially unfortunate when one considered that their main rivals were called the Generals. Students were encouraged to cheer on their players, and even some of their team-spirit chants were about academic prowess.

  It’s D-U-N-B-A-R H-I-G-H High!

  It used to be so hard to spell

  It almost made me cry

  But since I came to Dunbar High

  It’s just like pumpkin pie

  It’s D-U-N-B-A-R H-I-G-H High!

  First and foremost, Dunbar was about academic rigor. The all-classical pedagogy focused on English, mathematics, the sciences, ancient history, Negro history, military drill, physical education, music, drawing, domestic science, Latin, Spanish, French, and German.

  At one point, the Dunbar workload was so heavy the board of education had to get involved after a parent appealed to the members to do something. During an investigation, one student reported that she woke up at 5:00 AM every day just to finish the work. One student had begged his teacher not to assign a test because he had to answer 150 questions for another class. The teachers agreed to decrease the workload to one hour per night for each major subject.5

  The school’s difficulty was causing a serious attrition rate in the mid-1920s. Dunbar began losing students for three reasons. Most were students who failed out, followed by students who transferred to technical schools, and then students who had to leave in order to work.6 The Dunbar position was a bit unforgiving. In a detailed report presented to the principal, the head of the history and English department reported that “
thirty-seven left the first semester, the majority of these being self-supporting pupils who lacked the courage and finance to continue the work.”

  It was clear that boys left school more easily and earlier than girls. Often they were offered jobs, but the boys would eventually return. The girls stayed in school as long as possible because it was a social marker to make it through Dunbar. As the author of the report, Professor Otelia Cromwell, wrote, “Often only a brick wall of insurmountable Ds makes a girl stop.”

  The report suggested the failure rates were the result of a change in the student population. By the 1920s, ten times as many students enrolled in high school than in the 1890s. The Dunbar faculty felt that students who belonged in vocational schools, business schools, or possibly in the job market were all coming to Dunbar—and perhaps they shouldn’t. Cromwell wrote, “The pupils entering the high school are not as selective a group as they were thirty years ago. The schools universally are going deeper down the scale socially, economically, and also intellectually.”

  The solution was early intervention during the first year. Dunbar would track students by ability groups to cater to their needs, identify students who perhaps should transfer to vocational schools, and then facilitate that transition. In the 1920s a new Negro business high school, Cardozo, opened in the old Central High School building, so students who wanted secretarial or business skills could go there. Phelps was a vocational school for those seeking specific training. And for those who needed to get jobs, the new Dunbar model was to keep them in school until they were academically competent enough to stand a chance in the world. Right or wrong, the faculty felt the way to preserve Dunbar was to keep the academic bar astronomically high. The school was not a democracy but a meritocracy or a dictatorship, with academic expectation as the undeniable, unchallenged boss.

  Being a Dunbar student was a way of life. The strong program was a given and was the reason why students went to Dunbar. And would excel, period. The school adopted a crest and a Latin motto, Adveris Major, Par Secundis (Greater in Adversity, Equal in Prosperity). The words formed a halo around a woman in a robe with a book on her lap and it was embossed on every yearbook. New students were informed that to be at Dunbar they had to have “a serious purpose to succeed.” To achieve those ends, students were counseled about what to eat and wear and how to behave. All students were given a small handbook and asked to read it and consult it regularly. The handbook went far beyond the classroom. It would make a libertarian uncomfortable. The student handbook instructed students not to gossip and to have good manners. It suggested sleeping eight hours a day “with the windows open.” There were even guidelines on how to pick friends: “Girls and boys who fail in lessons, who are unsatisfactory in deportment or careless in their habits, should not be chosen as companions.”

  The way the administration saw it, when a student chose to come to Dunbar, and if a student was lucky enough to stay there, he or she was a representative of Dunbar wherever that student went. Two pages of the student handbook were devoted to how to act in public.

  Dunbar students of the Virgil Class of 1927, devoted to the study of literature.

  Courtesy of the Historical Society of Washington

  On walking on the street:

  Avoid loud talking, boisterous laughter or familiar actions. If you desire to converse with a friend walk with her a little way but don’t loiter.

  Leave the street corners for traffic. 7

  For conduct at social affairs, students were told to:

  Always greet your hosts and hostesses upon entering the hall. If the function is a dance remember the following suggestions:

  Boys ask the girls to dance.

  Boys, after dancing thank your partner and escort her back to her seat. Do not leave her in the middle of the floor.

  Girls, remove all wraps before dancing.

  Do not accept an invitation to dance with anyone with whom you are not acquainted.

  Gum chewing is in bad taste. Avoid it.

  Some of the advice was practical and had to do with safety. Racial tensions were high in Washington following World War I. There had been riots in the summer of 1919. Negro citizens had been beaten by mobs of whites egged on by incendiary headlines about colored marauders. The Ku Klux Klan marched right down Pennsylvania Avenue on a spring day in 1925. The handbook advised students who rode streetcars, which were integrated, to speak in soft tones, not to yell, and to move quickly and quietly to their seats. The advice was as much about survival as manners.

  The assistant principal and dean of girls was Julia Evangeline Brooks. She was an impeccably groomed, handsome woman. In stature and carriage she resembled a very good-looking black version of Eleanor Roosevelt. She told her girls to keep their suits cleaned, pressed, and mended. The use of cosmetics should be avoided. “The superfluous use of powder is condemned,” advised the student handbook, and girls were told to “use your powder puff at home or in the dressing room or locker room, not in the classroom corridor or on the street.” Clothes should be “appropriate” materials—ginghams, percales, and dimities—so that they could be washed frequently. As for other fabrics: “Silks, chiffons, Georgettes, satins have no place in your wardrobe. Do not buy them.”

  The boys’ rules were not as precise, but the rules for all students had one consistent theme: cleanliness. Take baths daily. Brush teeth thoroughly three times a day. Form a habit of 100 percent neatness. “Be unwilling to wear soiled garments,” and “Keep your shoes shined and mended. Don’t be ‘at the heel.’ Let your habits proclaim that you are a true lady or gentleman.”8 There was a near obsession with hygiene in the Dunbar rulebook. It was known as “The Gospel of the Toothbrush,” as preached by Booker T. Washington.9 At the Tuskegee Institute he made hygiene an integral part of the curriculum, and reportedly, no student was allowed to stay who did not use a toothbrush. It was a form of civilization in Washington’s opinion.

  Cleanliness was the American way for the upper and middle classes, and striving Negroes knew appearing immaculate was key to their acceptance and future prosperity. It was also a way to distinguish oneself from the European immigrants and poorer southerners, white and black, who were moving into the cities. Some were unfamiliar with the basics of hygiene that were necessary in big cities where, in close quarters, disease could easily spread. Some of the new arrivals couldn’t afford luxuries such as running water and soap. And while poor whites and middle-class whites were distinguishable to some, in the eyes of the law and the eyes of many Washingtonians, colored was colored.

  Here is a true story. A clerk in a southern store was once unwilling to accept a coat returned by a Negro because she said it was no longer considered clean. When the manager made her take it, she whispered to another clerk, “We can’t put that coat back in stock. Who wants to buy a nigger coat? Some little white girl will probably come in and buy it and not know it is a nigger coat.”10 Being exceptionally clean and neat was at least one thing a Dunbar student could control to knock down assumptions about his or her hygiene that were based on skin color.

  There was a price to pay for not living up to Dunbar standards. Students who weren’t true ladies or gentlemen would find themselves on the bench outside Miss Brooks’s office. Nobody wanted that. As one graduate said, Bin Laden would have been frightened of Miss Brooks.

  An M Street graduate herself, Miss Brooks was one of the Twenty Pearls, the women who founded the first Negro sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She was keen on ritual and tradition. She maintained discipline and decorum at Dunbar for twenty-six years, working right up until her sudden death from a heart attack suffered at home after a full day of work at the school.11

  It was a running joke among the students that as a year-end present someone should give Miss Brooks planks of wood so she could lengthen the bench outside her office. This would accommodate the growing number of students who found themselves parked there for breaking the rules. A student who was absent more than three consecutive days had to reregi
ster to get back in. If a student disobeyed one of the lunch monitors, he or she would end up sitting on the bench. Miss Brooks was known to line up young men outside her office and stare them down, finally remarking, “You don’t look like the criminal type to me!” At dances she would walk around with a ruler to ensure that at least six inches separated boys and girls. Principal Smith didn’t care for dances at all. “Well, he was Bulldog Smith,” recalled the valedictorian of the class of 1935. “He hated to hear the kind of music that we had then. You know the kind of music in 1940, I mean, 1935. It wasn’t that much, but it was like swing music. We never—we didn’t have dances at our school like they did at Armstrong. They had a dance every month or something. But Mr. Smith didn’t like to hear that music. So, we only had dances once every now and then.”

  Each teacher was known for his or her individual style of discipline.

  “What are you here for, young man?” Principal Smith would ask.

  “I will flunk your grandma!” said Mr. Allen, a Latin teacher.

  “Go back and get your excuse,” was a regular line from French teacher Mrs. Brewer.

  “All the ladies and gentlemen will be quiet” was all Miss Brooks had to say to hush a room. If Miss Brooks herself didn’t catch you breaking the rules, she had ways of finding out about infractions nonetheless. Class cutters were a special pet peeve of her boss and co-disciplinarian, Principal Smith, and she had spies around the city. The man who owned the candy store on the corner would pick up the phone if he spotted unusual activity in his store during school hours. If Miss Brooks noticed that a certain group of Dunbar students was not at school and, say, the singing group the Ink Spots was in town, she would head right over to the Howard Theater and ask the manager to flip on the lights. Then she would escort AWOL students back to class—and activate the grapevine. Their mothers knew what had happened before the kids got home.

  Students could not avoid Dunbar teachers if they tried. One could be a fellow member at church, in Miss Brooks’s case the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, where her father was a pastor for many years. A teacher could live next door. And in the early days, each student was assigned a section teacher he or she would see three times a day: in the morning, at recess, and again at the close of school. The section teacher would track the students’ attendance and performance, and guide and mentor them along the way. “It was an attitudinal institution,” said Carol Miller, class of 1925. “You got support not just from your teachers but from your classmates. If you got sick, they took care of you.”12 Or if a student was in trouble, a teacher might intervene. Geneoa Rhodes was working every day, running an elevator from 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM in a apartment for forty dollars a month. Her teacher, Miss Juanita Howard, tried to find Geneoa another job with better hours so that the girl could put more time and energy into her schoolwork. Miss Howard reported to the principal and guidance committee: “She has a stepmother whom she helps; the father of no help to either. Is a well-behaved and earnest pupil.”13 During the Great Depression the school stepped in and started a child welfare group to help children in need.