Douglass School (Lexington, Kentucky)

Douglass School
Photo taken 17 March 2013
Address
465 Price Road Lexington, Kentucky, 40508-1057
Information
Opened	1929
Closed	1971
Grades	1–12

Douglass School in Lexington, Kentucky was both a primary and secondary Fayette County Public Schools from 1929 to 1971. Douglass School operated solely for African American students. The building that once housed Douglass School, located at 465 Price Road, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Fayette County in 1998.

Douglass School, named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass, opened in 1929. Built with funds from the Rosenwald Fund, the original eight room building cost $30,000 to build and was located at the corner of Chiles Avenue and Price Road.

From 1929 to 1936, the school housed grades 1–12. In 1931 Douglass School was the first all black county school in Kentucky to receive a Class A Rating. From 1936 to 1948, the school held grades 1–10. In 1951, the elementary school was moved to 465 Price Road to house grades 1–6 behind the high school building, designed by architect John T. Gillig and built in 1947. By the time of the completion of this new high school, there were only 62 public high schools for black students in Kentucky, and only thirteen of these were, like the Douglass School, county facilities. In 1953, four new rooms were added, along with a new lunchroom, auditorium, library, band room and agricultural room.

An overheated furnace led to the destruction of one of the elementary school buildings in January 1955. Damages were estimated at $130,000 to $150,000. In 1963, grades 10–12 were transferred to Lafayette High School and Bryan Station High School. At the time of its closing in 1971, there were approximately 435 students in grades 1–6.

Inspired by the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Helen Cary Caise age 16, between her sophomore and junior years of high school in 1955, enrolled in a summer course in U.S. History at Lafayette High School. She was the first black student at a white school in the county. The enrollment was approved by the superintendent at the time, N.C. Turpen. Wade later remembered: "I had no clue I was making history. I just thought I was doing what I had a right to do." She faced no direct attacks (her white classmates, she said, generally "just ignored me" and she befriended one girl, Barbara Levy), but she was escorted to class by uncles and her grandfather who feared for her safety. Meanwhile, her family received threatening phone calls and her father's concrete business was essentially lost due to the repercussions from white supremacists. She graduated from Douglass High school and then went on to earn a teaching degree at Kentucky State University.