BNHA Public School No. 130 (Booker T. Washington Middle)
Affiliations
Baltimore City Landmark
Interpretive Framework
Gaining Freedom for All: African American Heritage and the Struggle for Equality
Shaping a Monumental City: The City’s Growth in the 20th Century
Star Attractions
Pennsylvania Avenue Heritage Trail
Resource Type
Points of Interest
1300 McCulloh St
Baltimore, Maryland 21217
Booker T. Washington Junior High School (No. 130) replaced the Old Western High School in 1929. Many renowned alumni have passed through its illustrious halls, including civil rights attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Representative and former President/ CEO of the NAACP Kweisi Mfume, bandleader Cab Calloway, and Verda Welcome, the nation’s first female state senator.
Baltimore’s public school system played a pivotal role in the history of the country’s public education. While it is impossible to forget Thurgood Marshall’s famous 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, it is easy to forget that Baltimore’s Polytechnic Institute was forced to integrate in 1952, two years before the Brown decision outlawed separate but equal education. Baltimore ordered all schools desegregated shortly after the 1954 decision became law.
The original Booker T. Washington Middle School building at Lafayette and McCulloh was erected in 1895 as the Western High School for Girls. Western provided the first opportunity for girls in Baltimore to get an education beyond grammar school.