Booker T. Washington High School
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1893 as Colored High School in Houston's Fourth Ward, this was the first high school open to African Americans in the city, teaching Latin, science, mathematics and more at a time when Black secondary education was scarce across the South. It produced its first graduate by 1896, housed Houston's first library accessible to African Americans in 1909, and became a seedbed for higher education that ultimately grew into Texas Southern University. Renamed in 1927 for Booker T. Washington, the school later relocated to Independence Heights and pioneered Houston's first magnet program in 1974.
Why it matters
The school embodies the long African American struggle to build educational opportunity from the ground up, tracing a direct line from a segregated 19th-century classroom to a major public university.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1893, when this school opened in Houston's Fourth Ward as Colored High School, secondary education for Black students was a rarity across the American South. Slavery lay less than three decades in the past, segregation was hardening into law, and public high schools open to African Americans were few and far between.
Houston's Fourth Ward — later a heart of Black life in the city — was the natural home for such an institution. The school sat on San Felipe Street, now West Dallas Street, and for more than thirty years it stood alone as the only high school the city offered its African American young people.
That solitary status is the key to understanding its importance. Into the 1920s, if a Black family in Houston wanted a high school education for their children, this was the place. Its classrooms carried the hopes of an entire community determined to claim learning in an era built to deny it.
People & events
The school's early history is a story of firsts, each one hard-won. Its first principal, Charles H. Atherton, led it from the beginning until 1912 — two decades of steady stewardship that set the institution on its feet. The curriculum was no watered-down offering: students took English, Latin, mathematics, science, and history, the full college-preparatory program of the day.
By 1896, just three years after the doors opened, Wright Mungin completed the coursework to become the school's first graduate — a milestone for him and a proof of concept for the whole enterprise. In 1909 the school broke new ground again, when the colored branch of the Carnegie Library opened inside its walls, giving Houston's African American residents their first library they could actually use.
The school became a seedbed for higher learning, too. Wiley College established an extension branch here in 1925, and the line of Houston institutions that grew from this soil eventually became Texas State University for Negroes in 1947 and then Texas Southern University in 1951. In 1927, after a major renovation, the school was renamed for Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute.
Its place in the American story
This one school traces, in miniature, the long African American struggle to build educational opportunity from almost nothing. It runs from a single segregated classroom in 1893 to a full university — a direct, unbroken line that few institutions can claim.
That arc mirrors a national one. Across the country, Black communities in the decades after emancipation poured their energy into schools, libraries, and colleges, understanding education as the surest path to full citizenship. A high school that also birthed a library and helped seed a university embodies that faith in learning as powerfully as any place in America.
The school's later chapters carry the story into the modern era. When it earned the Houston Independent School District's first magnet program in 1974 during integration — a High School for Engineering Professions that continues today — it showed the same institution adapting once more, still reaching toward opportunity across a century of change.
If you visit
Come to this story with an eye for continuity. The school moved in 1959 from its original Fourth Ward home to a campus in Independence Heights, itself a historic African American community, so you are following an institution that has traveled across the city while keeping its name and mission.
As you take in the place, hold the whole timeline in mind: the 1893 classroom, the first graduate in 1896, the pioneering library of 1909, the 1927 renaming, and the magnet program that still trains young engineers. Few schools let you stand in the presence of so much layered history at once.
Fold this into an exploration of Houston's African American heritage, from the Fourth Ward to Independence Heights to the campus of Texas Southern University, the descendant of this very school. Read the marker slowly and let it connect the dots — you are looking at the roots of institutions that shaped, and still shape, Black Houston.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles H. Atherton
- · Booker T. Washington
- · Wright Mungin
Themes & tags
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