Revive Your Darlings

The Castle on the Hill

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This article is the third in a series, “Revive Your Darlings,” where writers were encouraged to bring back ideas that were cut or abandoned in the writing process of a previous project. 

Central High School, Washington D.C., photographer unknown, photo published between 1910-1920, Library of Congress (LOC).

“It is now time for white people to stand in solid phalanx for their civil rights, the same as Negro people assert theirs,” declared Washingtonian John H. Connaughton at a 1950 Washington, D.C. school board meeting. Over four hundred people had crammed into an elementary school auditorium for the meeting and more than forty people would testify on an education issue dividing the community. Connaughton, however, was not testifying about desegregation. Rather, the assembled Washingtonians had gathered to discuss whether or not one of the white high schools in the city should be turned into a Black high school. As the residents fiercely debated the issue, the school board’s buildings and grounds committee chairman, Philip Sidney Smith, had to repeatedly ask for quiet as attendees booed and applauded.1

The high school in question, Cardozo High School, sits on top of a steep hill overlooking downtown Washington, D.C., the U.S. Capitol building, and the Washington Monument. As of 2021, ninety-nine percent of its students were non-white.2 Seventy years ago, prior to the 1954 Brown vs. Board Supreme Court decision, the sprawling brick complex was named Central High School and was an all-white school. Dissatisfied with the inadequate school buildings available to Black children, Black Washingtonians fought to turn Central into a Black school. The battle over the school, a few years prior to integration, demonstrated how Black parents in D.C. deployed the city’s unique status as the “center of democracy” to advocate for equal opportunity. The transfer of Central High School also revealed the lengths white Washingtonians were willing to go to hold onto power.

Central High School assembly, Washington, D.C., photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1899, (Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress).

For decades, Washington, D.C.’s public schools had operated under a segregated “dual track” system. Track One schools were all-white and Track Two schools were all non-white, and mostly Black students. As D.C.’s Black population doubled from 1910 to 1940, Track Two schools became increasingly overcrowded, especially since the District’s government halted the construction of new schools during World War II.3

The inequities in the system were particularly clear between Central High and Cardozo High. Central High was the flagship white high school in D.C. and boasted of graduates such as J. Edgar Hoover and numerous West Point alumni.4 It heralded its massive sports stadium, tennis courts, two gymnasiums, swimming pool, and indoor running track.5 In 1950, the state-of-the-art building was nearly half-empty while Cardozo High School — designed for 1,040 students — housed 1,800 pupils. The Track Two school was forced to hold three shifts for classes and the boys’ gym was a fifty by twenty foot janitor’s closet with low-hanging pipes.6 The track team practiced in the hallways and the cafeteria could only accommodate 248 students.7 Dr. Ellis Knox, a professor of education at nearby Howard University, summed up the injustice of the situation. The half vacant space at Central was “a luxurious extravagance, educationally unsound and economically unpalatable” when Black schools like Cardozo were so overcrowded.8

D.C.’s school board spent nearly a year deciding how to address overcrowding at Cardozo. By fall 1949, two plans were under consideration. The first plan would create a satellite campus at Park View Elementary School. Five hundred of Cardozo’s female students would then attend classes at Park View. School Superintendent Dr. Hobart M. Corning, citizen associations (whites-only neighborhood groups), and the Central High Alumni Association supported this proposal. The second plan would transfer Central High’s campus to Cardozo students. The white Central students would then attend other white high schools across town. This plan received widespread support from the D.C. branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Black neighborhood groups formed in response to segregated citizen’s associations, and the Local 27 chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union.9

As the school board considered the two options in 1949 and 1950, the D.C. press closely covered any developments and many Washingtonians wrote letters to the editor to express their thoughts about the proposals. Black Washingtonians refused to be intimidated and insisted they deserved such a prized facility: “The crux of the issue simply is this: We Negroes can have anything the whites no longer want,” wrote an anonymous person in a letter to the editor. “We asked for Central High School but they think it is too good for us.”10 Cardozo students wrote letters describing how the conditions at Cardozo impacted their education. “As a student of Cardozo High School, I feel it is my duty to present to the public a problem which is confusing to all of us—the constant noise due to the triple-shift,” wrote Edna M. Burrnell in a letter published in the Washington Post. “There are so many people moving around all day that it is impossible for us to hear in our classrooms or to find quiet places to study.”11 Some opponents of the Central transfer plan diminished the hardships of overcrowding at Cardozo and argued the white community had never complained while it endured crowding at schools during World War I.12 “Today there are too many people out for publicity, playing the part of martyrs,” wrote an anonymous “Parent.”13

School children at Central High School, which became Cardozo High School, Washington, D.C, photographer Theodor Horydczak, photo published between 1920-1950, Library of Congress (LOC).

The District of Columbia House Appropriations Committee supported transfering Central to Carozo students. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Joe B. Bates (D-KY), wrote a letter to C. Melvin Sharpe, the school board president. Because D.C. is under federal control, the committee plays a major role in D.C.’s budget. Transfering students to Central would solve the problem of overcrowding and Congress would not have to spend $5 million for a new school.14 The all-white Citizen’s Associations and other transfer opponents decried such congressional lobbying, or as the president of the Federation of Citizen’s Associations called it, “coercion.”15 The debate over Central was so impassioned one school board member was reportedly offered a $5,000 bribe to change her vote.16

On January 31, 1950, the school board’s Building and Grounds Committee voted in favor of the Central transfer plan, sending it to the school board for final approval. This outcome was, in part, the hard work of the Black community’s better organized lobbying efforts. Black Washingtonians who had supported the transfer plan had come out to this important meeting in large numbers, while white opponents had a lower turnout. In the days following the Jan. 31 committee vote, a flood of white Washingtonians requested to testify at the next school board meeting.17

More than four hundred people attended another hearing held on February 10, 1950. The meeting had to be moved to a nearby school auditorium to accommodate the crowd. As more than forty people testified, the racial divide on the issue was clear. A white person testifying in favor of the transfer was called a “Benedict Arnold” by other white attendees.18 Equal numbers of advocates of the transfer spoke, including Woolsey Hall, president of the Federation of Civic Associations, the Black neighborhood groups. “It augurs poorly for American democracy — that these people should scream ‘keep Central for white people’ when 1700 children are housed in inadequate buildings almost 80 percent overcrowded.” At the conclusion of the meeting, the Buildings and Grounds Committee stood behind its recommendation to transfer Central to Cardozo students.19

In March, the school board officially adopted the Central transfer plan. Editorials poured in to local newspapers decrying the “defilement of tradition” and the city’s takeover by “outside influences.”20 That fall, 2,118 Black students attended classes in the building that had formerly held white Central students. In the old building, the school had specialized in industrial subjects but the school, now named Cardozo High School, offered an expanded curriculum to be the “first real comprehensive high school open to Negro youth.” On inspection, school officials found the old Cardozo building dangerous and later had it condemned.21 Four years later, D.C. schools would be integrated in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Bolling v. Sharpe decision, the D.C. companion case to Brown v. Board of Education. The story of Cardozo provides a provocative example of how a city debated education and race in the waning days of de jure segregation.

Youth football game at Cardozo Senior High School, Washington, D.C., photographer Carol M. Highsmith, 2010, Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress (LOC).

 

  1. “Final Meeting on Central Shift Sharply—and Evenly—Divided,” February 11, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  2. “Cardozo Education Campus,” U.S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/district-of-columbia/cardozo-education-campus-4644.
  3. Greg Borchardt, “Making DC Democracy’s Capital” (PhD diss., The George Washington University, 2013), 57-61.
  4. “They Were Schoolmates at Central High,” August 8, 1943, Box 69, Folder “Central High,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  5. Elsie Carper, “Cardozo Moved Just in Time, Now Offers Rounded Program,” October 22, 1950, Washington Post, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  6. “More on Cardozo-Central Move, And a Brotherhood Week Suggestion,” February 25, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  7. “Trackmen Practice in Cardozo Corridors, Teen-Ager Charges,” January 31, 1950, Washington Daily News, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  8. Elsie Carper, “Central High Negro Use Recommended,” February 1, 1950, Washington Post, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  9. Elsie Carper, “Central High Negro Use Recommended,” February 1, 1950, Washington Post, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  10. “Another Letter on Need for Adequate Schools for Negroes,” Box 69, Folder “Central High,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  11. Edna M. Burrnell, “Another Cardozo Pupil Advocates Moving to Another School,” November 27, 1949, Washington Post, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  12. “Rebukes Impatience of People Who Want Progress in a Hurry,” “Recalls Bad Conditions in Schools of the Past,” “Cardozo Crowding,” Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  13. “Rebukes Impatience of People Who Want Progress in a Hurry,” Washington Post, November 1949, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  14. Although, ironically, the money had already been set aside in the budget for new schools, showing how little Congress understood the D.C. budget. “Congressmen Ask Central Transfer,” “Central For Cardozo,” February 14, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo.”
  15. “Citizens Attack Congress Role in Central Transfer,” February 10, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo.”
  16. “Probe Bribe Call in School Fight,” Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo.” Elviria Magdeburger had initially supported the plan to transfer 500 Cardozo students to the Park View School, but she changed her position in January 1950. Madgeburger was so upset by the call with a bribe offer that she hung up “so quickly, she could hardly give any information about the call.” U.S. Attorney George Morris Fay investigated the call, but was unable to trace it or uncover who had placed it.
  17. “Citizens Swarm to Fight Central High Transfer,” February 1, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo.”
  18. “Final Meeting on Central Shift Sharply—and Evenly—Divided,” February 11, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  19. “Final Meeting on Central Shift Sharply—and Evenly—Divided,” February 11, 1950, Box 69.
  20. For examples, see Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo,” Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
  21. Elsie Carper, Cardozo Moved Just in Time, Now Offers Rounded Program,” October 22, 1950, Washington Post, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.
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Kyla Sommers is the author of When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital (New Press, 2023). Sommers earned her PhD in history from The George Washington University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Washington History journal, and the book Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism. Sommers is the digital engagement editor at American Oversight and was previously the editor-in-chief of the History News Network.

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