Frederick A. Douglass High School is a public high school in the city of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The school is known for its role in serving African-American students in the state of Oklahoma and has produced a variety of academic researchers and civic leaders as well as military figures. Frederick Douglass Moon, the longest-serving principal at the school, went on to play a major role in the desegregation movement in the middle of the 20th century. Working from 1940 to 1961 at the High School, he went on to be elected to the Oklahoma City Board of Education in 1972 and served as its first African-American president in 1974. [1] [2] It is also known for its music program and the teacher, Zelia Breaux, who created the program that helped produce several notable musicians. The school began as a segregated school. It is named for Frederick Douglass.
The school is located at 900 North Martin Luther King Avenue. The Trojans are the school's mascot. The new school building was built in 2006. The school song is "Rise up O Douglassites!". It serves 9th to 12th grades. [3] The school colors are black and orange. [4]
According in US News in 2018, the school has about 405 students, 97 percent are minority, college readiness is about 7 percent, and slightly less than half of students are proficient in reading and math. About a quarter take Advanced Placement (AP) exams. [5]
Students from the school protested segregation and conducted sit-ins at segregated Oklahoma City businesses. [6]
The Frederick A. Douglass School, initially called the Colored School opened in Oklahoma City in 1891 between Robinson and Harvey Avenues on California Street. The original school burned and was relocated. [7] In 1934, the school moved again. Known as the Douglass Junior-Senior High School, it was located at 600 North High Street. Charles O. Rogers served as principal from 1935 to 1940 and was replaced by Frederick Douglass Moon. [8] By 1952, the student body had grown substantially, experiencing a 40% growth rate in enrollment between 1945 and 1952. Moon met with black leaders and the Oklahoma City School Board to plead for a new school. [9] On January 2, 1953, a ground breaking ceremony attended by dignitaries and leaders from the black community, including James Stewart, regional head of the southwest region of the NAACP; A. D. Matthews, president of the Negro Chamber of Commerce; and Maude Brockway, former president of the Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. [10] The new school was built on the site of the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds at Northeast 10th Street and Eastern Avenue. [11] The old school building which was vacated in 1954 became the site of the F. D. Moon Junior High School, later renamed the Page-Woodson School, which operated until 1994 and in 2017 was redeveloped into apartments and a community center. [12] [13] [14]
The new Douglass High School opened in September 1954, in the midst of uncertainty surrounding the recent decision to desegregate schools by the U. S. Supreme Court. [15] The dedication ceremony for the new school, the first black senior high school in Oklahoma City was held on May 1, 1955. [16] The school was rebuilt in 2006 at 900 N. Martin Luther King Avenue. [7]
Zelia Breaux taught music at the school from 1918 to 1948, organizing the first junior high school band in the negro schools of Oklahoma. [14] [17] Her students included Charlie Christian, Jimmy Rushing, and trumpet player turned writer Ralph Ellison.[ citation needed ] In the 1940s, she directed the Douglass High School chorus and the band became nationally known. [18]
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Oklahoma is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New Mexico on the west, and Colorado on the northwest. Partially in the western extreme of the Upland South, it is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its residents are known as Oklahomans and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
Norman is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, with a population of 128,097 as of 2021. It is the largest city and the county seat of Cleveland County, and the second-largest city in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, behind the state capital, Oklahoma City. It is 20 miles south of OKC.
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a 320-acre (130-hectare) campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution for 2021–22 was £295 million, of which £30 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £370 million, and had an undergraduate offer rate of 85% in 2021.
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the state of Oklahoma. In Fall 2022, the university had 28,840 students enrolled, most at its main campus in Norman. Employing nearly 3,000 faculty members, the university offers 152 baccalaureate programs, 160 master's programs, 75 doctorate programs, and 20 majors at the first professional level.
Mary Ann Camberton Shadd Cary was an American-Canadian anti-slavery activist, journalist, publisher, teacher, and lawyer. She was the first black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada. She was also the second black woman to attend law school in the US. Mary Shadd edited The Provincial Freeman, established in 1853. Published weekly in southern Ontario, it advocated equality, integration and self-education for black people in Canada and the United States.
Oklahoma City University (OCU) is a private university historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Storer College was a historically black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put it, it was a unique institution whose focus changed several times. There is no one category of college into which it fits neatly. Sometimes white students studied alongside Black students, which at the time was prohibited by law at state-supported schools in West Virginia and the other Southern states, and sometimes in the North.
Sojourner–Douglass College was a private college organized around an Afrocentric focus of study and located in Baltimore, Maryland. The college was founded in 1972 and focused on educating mature students. The college's accreditation was revoked by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools effective June 30, 2015, and the college remains closed for instruction.
Frederick Douglass High School is a public school located in northwest Atlanta, Georgia, United States, bordering the Collier Heights and Center Hill communities.
The Oklahoma City Public Schools, abbreviated OKCPS, is a multicultural public school district serving most of the urban area of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is the second largest primary and secondary education district in the state of Oklahoma, after Tulsa Public Schools, with 66 schools and approximately 32,086 students enrolled students during the 2021–2022 school year.
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.
H. Grady Spruce High School is a public school in the Spruce Square Development of Southeast Dallas in the state of Texas. H. Grady Spruce High School, which covers grades 9–12, is a part of the Dallas Independent School District. Spruce serves several sections of southeast Dallas, including Balch Springs. In 2015, the school was rated "Met Standard" by the Texas Education Agency.
Wallace Dao-kui Loh is a Peruvian/American university administrator. He was the president of the University of Maryland, College Park, from 2010 until 2020.
Douglass High School was a segregated high school in North Webster Groves, Missouri from 1926 until 1956. Named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the school served the area of North Webster, which had been settled by many black families after the Civil War.
Douglass School in Lexington, Kentucky, US, was both a primary and secondary Fayette County Public Schools from 1929 to 1971. Douglass School operated solely for African American students. The building that once housed Douglass School, located at 465 Price Road, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Fayette County in 1998.
Zelia N. Breaux was an American music instructor and musician who played the trumpet, violin and piano. She organized the first music department at Langston University in Oklahoma and the school's first orchestra. As the Supervisor of Music for the segregated African American schools in Oklahoma City, Breaux organized bands, choral groups and orchestras, establishing a music teacher in each school in the district. She had a wide influence on many musicians including Charlie Christian and Jimmy Rushing, as well as novelist Ralph Ellison. Breaux was the first woman president of the Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers and was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma YWCA Hall of Fame, Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Bandmasters Association Hall of Fame. The Oklahoma City/County Historical Society made a posthumous presentation of its Pathmaker Award to Breaux in 2017.
West Chester University is a public research university in and around West Chester, Pennsylvania. The university is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". With 17,719 undergraduate and graduate students as of 2019, WCU is the largest of the 10 state-owned universities belonging to the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and the sixth largest university in Pennsylvania. It also maintains a Center City Philadelphia satellite campus on Market Street.
Inman E. Page was a Baptist leader and educator in Oklahoma and Missouri. He was president of four schools: the Lincoln Institute, Langston University, Western University, and Roger Williams University and principal of Douglass High School in Oklahoma City. He and George Milford were the first black students at Brown University.
Maude Brockway was an American teacher, milliner, and activist. She was born in Arkansas in 1876 and moved to Indian Territory after completing her education at Arkansas Baptist College. Initially, she worked as a teacher around Ardmore, Chickasaw Nation and then opened a hat-making business. In 1910, she moved to Oklahoma City and became involved in the Black Clubwomen's Movement. She was one of the founders of the state affiliate, Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and city chapter, Oklahoma City Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. She served as president of the city chapter from 1925 to 1950 and of the state federation from 1936 to 1940, as well as holding offices in the national organization.
