Overview

In the first half of the twentieth century, Dunbar was an academically elite public school, despite being racially segregated by law and existing at the mercy of racist congressmen who held the school's purse strings. These enormous challenges did not stop the local community from rallying for the cause of educating its children. Dunbar attracted an amazing faculty: one early principal was the first black graduate of Harvard, almost all the teachers had graduate degrees, and several earned PhDs-all extraordinary achievements given the Jim Crow laws of the times. Over the school's first eighty years, these teachers developed generations of highly educated, high-achieving African Americans, groundbreakers that included the first black member of a presidential cabinet, the first black graduate of the US Naval Academy, the first black army general, the creator of the modern blood bank, the first black attorney general, the legal mastermind behind school desegregation, and hundreds of educators. By the 1950s, Dunbar High School was sending 80 percent of its students to college. Today, as with many troubled urban public schools, there are Dunbar students who struggle with basic reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart, whose parents were both Dunbar graduates, tells the story of the school's rise, fall, and path toward resurgence as it looks to reopen its new, state-of-the-art campus.

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9781613731765

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Reviews

""In First Class, Alison Stewart skillfully chronicles the rise and fall of Dunbar High School, America's first black public high school. Recalling the institution's extraordinary legacy and the lives of its accomplished alumni--her own parents included--Stewart will convince you that there's cause for hope, and that the school's brightest days may still be ahead."" --President Bill Clinton ""Many of the legal minds behind school desegregation learned their sense of self and sense of determination at Dunbar High School. First Class explains how Dunbar produced extraordinary men and women who could be role models for any child of any era."" --Hill Harper, actor and author of Letters to a Young Brother ""The US Army's first black general. The first black federal judge. The first black cabinet secretary. If you pull the thread that ties together these (and so many other) pioneers in African American achievement, you find the story of Dunbar High School. Alison Stewart uncovers the hidden history of a great American institution, and shows us the moving, herculean, human effort it took to build it in the first place, and to rebuild it now. What an amazing story--what a great book."" --Rachel Maddow, author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, and host of The Rachel Maddow Show

Author Information

Alison Stewart is an award-winning journalist whose twenty-year career includes anchoring and reporting for NPR, NBC News, ABC News, and CBS News. She got her start covering politics for MTV News. Stewart is a graduate of Brown University. Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University and host of The Melissa Harris-Perry Show.

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