Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School to celebrate 100th birthday

ATLANTA—Booker T. Washington High School, Georgia’s first public high school for African Americans and the Atlanta Public Schools system, will celebrate its 100th birthday with a dedication ceremony and program on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

The event will recognize this year’s senior class and will feature alumni from several decades and various city officials.

Booker T. Washington High School opened in September 1924 under the auspices of the Atlanta Board of Education. The school was named for Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery in 1856 on a small farm in Virginia. He  became one of the foremost black educators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the first principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Booker T. Washington High School,  located in the West End at 45 Whitehouse Drive S.W. is steeped in history. The school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. At its entrance stands the only exact replica of the Booker T. Washington monument that is at Tuskegee University. The statue of Washington, called “Booker T. Washington Lifting the Veil of Ignorance” by sculptor Charles Keck reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”

Today, Booker T. Washington High boasts an enrollment of more than 1,600 students and a faculty and staff of more than 100.

Many notable trailblazers have attended Booker T. Washington High School including the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; Leroy Johnson, the first Black state senator in the South since Reconstruction; actress Lena Horne; rapper Lil’ Baby; and Herman J. Russell, Atlanta business pioneer and member of the Walk of Fame, just to name a few.