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…