Description:
The earliest schools in the city were private schools, or subscription schools as they were known then. Early records indicate that Mrs. L. H. North convened classes under a cottonwood tree near what is now Park Avenue between Broadway and Robinson on June 1, 1889. According to Roy Stewart in Born Grown, students paid $1.50 per month (depending on the grade and ability to pay). Classes were conducted inside a tent and students sat on nail kegs for seats – there were no desks. Other historians estimate Mrs. North taught about 70 children. It may seem unusual that school began in June, but this was about six weeks after the opening and some citizens were already concerned that their children’s minds were going fallow – and worse – due to the distractions and temptations of the famously unruly new city. In addition, there were no crops to work – as children often did then – because the Run was too late in the season for planting.
Later that year, in the Fall of 1889, Ms. Alice Beitman established the Young Ladies Seminary. Ms. Beitman ran the school until the formation of a public schools system in 1891, but, in the words of Dr. Angelo Scott, most of the girls “later became ornaments in the society of Oklahoma City.” The Seminary was located at First and Robinson and was, according to Lucyl Shirk in Oklahoma City: Capital of Soonerland, known as ‘the’ school to attend. It was soon rivalled, however, by the Juanita Academy which held classes in the Northside Hotel (23 West First) and was the equivalent of a co-ed junior high school.
It is important to remember that the reason schools were organized this way was that until May, 1890, about thirteen months after the Land Run, there was no legal authority in Oklahoma City – Congress had simply opened the land for settlement without providing for a system of government. In December, 1890 the Territorial Legislature passed legislation for establishing and funding public schools. In Oklahoma City, a Board of Education was elected and determined that the first public schools would begin classes on March 1, 1891 and continue through the end of June. The Board provided money for a school in each of the city’s four wards. They did not, however provide money for new buildings and classes were thus held in various storefronts and rooms in each ward. School began as scheduled that March, though, despite a heavy snowfall which did not deter a parade of the children around the city at the close of the day. Estimates vary from 865 to nearly 1000 students that first semester.
Another storm plagued the new school system that year – one of protest. Citizens were outraged that the Board of Education set the salaries for teachers at the exorbitant sum of $45 – 55 per month. This in spite of the fact that teachers were not even paid in legal tender, but in a scrip accepted only by local merchants (something akin to the ‘company store’ in mining towns), the value of which varied widely. One dollar of scrip rarely came to even eighty-five cents in real value. The classrooms were also crowded and often unheated and supplies and equipment were nowhere to be found. As for textbooks, students had to bring books from home and the teachers had to devise ways to teach 70 children the same thing from 70 different books!
The watershed year for the public school system came in 1893 when the first school bond election was held and the first high school established. Voters passed a bond in June of that year for $70,000 to fund permanent buildings for schools. Opponents of the bond issue quickly challenged the legality of the election and tied up funds until the District Court settled the matter in the spring of 1894 – but only allocated $45,000 of the bond money. Also in 1893 the federal government reverted ownership of Military Hill, the land east of the railroad tracks which made up the military reservation, to the city with the express purpose that the land be designated for educational use.
It was determined that a high school schould be built on this land when funds became available. At this time, students across the country generally attended school up to the eighth grade and high school was reserved for those learning skilled trades or as preparation for those going on to college. By 1893, the school population had increased to about 1200 students and there were a number of students which could benefit from a high school. Mrs. Selwyn Douglas (Julia) was selected to organize the high school when it could be built. But Mrs. Douglas, known for her boundless energy (she would later found the first public library), did not wait for a building. In the fall of that year she began classes. Ethel McMillan, in History of the Public Library of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, writes,
“There was no building, but what was that to thwart one with the ability, courage, and authority to worthily direct the opportunities for youth teeming with life at high tide? So to the four-room log house recently used as a barracks on the Military Reservation, gathered these young people from the various sections of the nation with the background of characteristics of all these areas and could any young people have been more fortunate in leadership?”
Although there was now only $45,000 to work with, construction on the new schools began in ernest in 1894. According to Shirk, a race ensued to see which ward could be the first to have the first brick school building in the city. Residents would visit the building sites and encourage construction crews and bookmakers did a brisk trade around town. Emerson, the first northside school, had to overcome an early protest by residents who said, “it was foolish to build Emerson so far out in the cornfield,” (it still stands at 715 North Walker). Washington School won the race, however and classes began at the new school at 315 South Walker in the spring semester of 1895. The bill for building these two schools came in at $44,000, just under the $45,000 allocated. Irving School (the high school) was built in time for classes to begin in September, 1896. It was located at 410 North Walnut on the northeast side of the city. The first class graduated six students that year.
There’s more to this story, however. You may recall that although the Territorial Legislature was formed in May, 1890, the school laws were not established until late December. The delay was largely due to a battle between Republicans and Democrats on educating the Territory’s black children. The Democrats wanted racially segregated schools and the Republicans did not. Eventually, as the school year approached, a compromise was reached whereby Democrats got their segrated schools, but Republicans required that each county could choose to integrate if it desired and if not the facilities for blacks must be at least equal to whites. Oklahoma County did not integrate however, and Oklahoma City developed a “second society” largely on the east side of the Santa Fe tracks. By 1894, Democrats and Populists had a majority in the Legislature and passed a number of “Jim Crow” laws including one which stated bluntly, “it shall hereafter be unlawful for any white child to attend a colored school and for any colored child to attend a white school.” Equal facilities were now “suggested” instead of required. Two years later though, in 1896, the U. S. Supreme Court would rule in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for whites and blacks could be “separate, but equal”. Despite this ruling, they were more often than not unequal.
So, another school opened in that snow storm on March 1, 1891 – Douglass School. It was installed in a two-room house at West California and Harvey. By 1898 a larger two-story house was used at 427 East California. It was the first to actually use the name Douglass. Like the early white schools it was an all-grades school. High school subjects were later taught, though, and in 1903 Douglass graduated its first high school class – seven girls and one boy. That same year the school burned and the following semester Douglass got its first brick building when it moved into Webster School (now renamed Douglass), one of the original ward schools built at the northwest corner of East California and Walnut. The original building sat about where home plate is now in the Bricktown Ballpark although the campus would eventually take up all of the square city block.
The next few years were marked by explosive growth in the school system. By 1900 there would be 2,400 pupils. By 1909, when the city experienced a population boom, the number would rise to 13,341. In 1910, the grand new Central High School was ready for students (construction started in 1908) and Douglass had now expanded to a six bilding campus. Following national trends, Oklahoma City schools wished to develop a junior high school program to better prepare more students for high school eligibility. The School Board tried to pass a bond in 1916, but again the voters balked and it was not until 1919 that a bond could be passed to build three new junior high schools. The first three, opened in 1920 were Classen, Webster, and Capitol Hill, however these quickly became overcrowded and in 1922 Roosevelt and Harding were added.
Oklahoma City has had a troubled relationship with its public schools since the education system was founded in those first months of settlement. Lack of funding and community support plagued the system from the beginning and would remain a problem for most of the next hundred years. Segregation was a local (and national) disgrace which would eventually thrust Oklahoma City into the national spotlight in the 1960s much as Topeka and Little Rock experienced a decade before.
FURTHER READING
Franks, Kenny A. and Paul F. Lambert, The Legacy of Dean Julien C. Monnet: Judge Luther Bohanon and the Desegregation of Oklahoma City’s Public Schools. Muskogee, Okla.: Western Heritage Books, 1984.
McMillan, Ethel Brewer, History of the Public Library of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Oklahoma City: The Author, 1951.
Scott, Angelo C., The Story of Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City: Times-Journal, 1939.
Shirk, Lucyl, Oklahoma City: Capital of Soonerland. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma City Board of Education, 1957.
Stewart, Roy P., Born Grown: An Oklahoma City History. Oklahoma City: Fidelity Bank, 1974.
Teall, Kaye M., Black History in Oklahoma: A Resource Book. [s.l.]: Oklahoma City Public Schools, 1971.