What’s the first Chicago school named in honor of a Black person?

Today, Chicago is filled with public schools bearing the names of prominent and influential Black people who were significant to the city and the U.S.

In Burnside, there’s Harold Washington Elementary School, named after the city’s first Black mayor. Washington Heights holds Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, named after the famed violinist and music educator. And in Bronzeville, an area that was known as Chicago’s “Black Belt” during the Great Migration starting around 1916, there’s Paul Laurence Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, named after the famed poet and playwright.

But this wasn’t always the case. Many of the district’s older schools are named after white men: George Washington High School serving Hegewisch and South Deering on the far East Side, Edgar Allan Poe Classical School in Pullman and Theodore Roosevelt High School in Albany Park.

So, what was the first public school in Chicago named in honor of a Black person?

The answer takes us back to 1936, when Chicago had just built its first high school to serve an exclusively Black student population, according to articles in the Chicago Defender. They named it DuSable High School, after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, Chicago’s first nonindigenous settler.

DuSable was an entrepreneur and trader of African descent who was born in what is now Haiti. By the late 1770s, he was living in what is currently Chicago with his Potawatomi wife, Kitahawa. Today, we know him as the “father of Chicago,” and his name is one we can see on monuments, even driving on Lake Shore Drive.

But the 1930s were a much different landscape, and it took two concurrent movements to ignite this change.

“I think there are two stories here happening at the same time,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “One is about the increasing knowledge of DuSable as an important figure of African descent during the 20th century.”

The other story has to do with the proposal to build the high school itself. The naming came with some controversy — the expected pushback from white residents, but also resistance from some in the school community.

A boom in young, Black migrants

Wendell Phillips High School opened in the early 1900s to replace the South Division High School — the first high school on Chicago’s South Side, built in 1875. This new school was named after an abolitionist and advocate for the rights of Native Americans. In his eulogy, Black lawyer George Lewis Ruffin said Phillips was "the one White American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice."

Initially, wealthy white Chicagoans enrolled at Wendell Phillips, but with the Great Migration, the school’s demographics drastically changed. In 1907, 90 Black students attended Wendell Phillips, yet by 1919, Todd-Breland said, the school had become predominantly Black.

By the late 1920s, it would become overpopulated.

“That is bringing an influx of people into Chicago, and that included a lot of young people,” Todd-Breland said. “A lot of the migrants, or young people that would be born here, would be the children of migrants in that early part of the 20th century. And so, there was not enough capacity in existing schools.”

Black Chicagoans pushed for a new school, which was to be called New Wendell Phillips. New Deal Public Works Administration funds from the federal government helped push along the construction of the new building, and it opened in 1935. At first, the original building was converted to an elementary school. But once school officials realized the new school couldn’t fit all students, it reopened as a high school later in the 1930s. That 1875 structure still operates as a high school today.

Recognizing Chicago’s ‘first citizen’

In the 1930s, prominent people pushed for a heightened knowledge of DuSable and an acknowledgement of his role as the city’s first citizen. Todd-Breland said the National De Saible Memorial Society, led by educator Annie Oliver, advocated for a replica of DuSable’s cabin to be featured in the 1933 World’s Fair, which still lacked Black representation decades after the Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The society’s advocacy was both significant and controversial. White settlers such as John Kinzie and others who lived at the Fort Dearborn outpost in the early 1800s were considered by many white people as Chicago’s first settlers.

“A lot of white folks did not like this,” Todd-Breland said. “Because this contradicted a narrative of white settlers as being the first permanent residents of the area.”

A win for advocates

Newspaper articles at the time reported Oliver and her group were also behind successfully changing New Wendell Phillips to DuSable High School. A June 1936 article in the New Journal and Guide confirms this influence: “Many who protested the change declared that DuSable was a Frenchman and not a Negro and that records differ as to his being Chicago’s first settler.”

In addition to little knowledge about DuSable, some Black people also wanted to keep the Wendell Phillips name, which by this point was a source of pride. Phillips had become the home of so many Black people who were building a new legacy at the school; their school spirit and sports wins even included cultivating players on the Savoy Big Five, the team that would become the Harlem Globetrotters.

“The history and legacy of Wendell Phillips High School was really important to Black Chicago,” Todd-Breland said. “But I do think what was significant about DuSable High School is that while Wendell Phillips was built in the early 1900s and originally served predominantly white students, DuSable was this first high school built specifically to serve Black students. And so, it was a point of pride outside of what the name of it was going to be.”

Black people advocating for — and then getting — a new, modern school with amenities felt like a big move toward equality.

“Things like labs, facilities for electrical work, mechanical drawing, auto shop, woodwork; it had a library, a pool, rehearsal rooms for choral and instrumental music. All of these things that were part of an idea of what a modern school should have … these were things that were being built for Black folks,” Todd-Breland said.

Having a facility that felt equal to or maybe even superior to some of the white high schools in Chicago at the time was an extra point of pride for Black Chicagoans who fought for it, Todd-Breland said.

“This is a time of segregation, and most of the advocacy for Black folks in Chicago around education during this period, it wasn’t really about desegregation,” she explained. “It was about funding equalization, and it was about educational equality.”

A lasting legacy

For decades, DuSable High School was known for its renowned arts program and its booming 4,000-student population. But in the early 2000s, enrollment dropped significantly with the closure of a nearby public housing complex. DuSable was first reorganized into three separate schools operating in the building. In 2013, the building became a Chicago landmark; today, it houses two smaller schools.

DuSable Alumni Coalition for Action, which has been instrumental in keeping the legacy of the school alive, still hosts events and programs. Last week, the group hosted a Black history event about civic learning to honor Chief Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. of the Illinois Supreme Court, who is from DuSable’s class of 1966.

“Chief Justice Neville gave a short speech to students from both schools about preparing for the [next] level,” coalition member Mary Fleming said. “He was given an award, and a lovely reception was held after the program.”

The powerhouse legacy of DuSable and all of the legendary names that walked its halls for decades won’t ever be forgotten. This list is remarkable: Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, Johnson Publishing founder John H. Johnson, “Soul Train” creator and host Don Cornelius — not to mention educators such as Captain Walter Dyett, who built DuSable’s renowned music program and produced the likes of Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Dorothy Donegan and Ella Jenkins.

Dr. Margaret Burroughs, who created what would be the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center — the oldest independent Black museum in the U.S. — taught art for over two decades at DuSable High School and is also part of the school’s lasting legacy.

“This was such an important institution within Black Chicago,” Todd-Breland said. “And a place that folks really took pride in.”

Arionne Nettles is a journalism professor, culture reporter and audio aficionado. She is the author of “We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything” and “Journalism for Dummies.” Follow her @arionnenettles.