With the dedication of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1930, the Little Rock School District worked within the bounds of legal segregation to create an above average educational facility with a college preparatory and vocational curriculum for Negroes. For the students and faculty who attended and taught at Dunbar, the school was an opportunity to reach for excellence in education and life, in preparation for a racially equal and integrated society.

The project,"The Finest High School for Negro Boys and Girls: Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas 1929 - 1955", presents the history of the largest, most impressive, and the first accredited public secondary institution for Blacks in Arkansas. Dunbar’s imposing brick and stone façade on the exterior, and the fully appointed interior with classrooms, vocational trade shops, laboratories, kitchens, and infirmary were unusual in the Jim Crow South. The funding provided to black public schools fell well below what the white schools received, resulting in numerous small, substandard educational facilities.

The Dunbar story is told through a traveling exhibit that was fabricated by the National Dunbar History Project, a collaboration of the NDAA and the Public History program and the Special Collection/Archives of the Ottenheimer Library at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The project was funded through alumni and corporate contributions and grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council. The museum quality exhibit is a collection of alumni interviews, artifacts and photographs of life at Dunbar, and records from the Little Rock Public School Board. Following two years of research and development, the exhibit opened to the public at the Arkansas Territorial Restoration in April 1997. It was displayed later in Philadelphia at the 1997 Biennial Reunion of the Classes, and since has traveled to several cities in Arkansas and was displayed at the Little Rock Convention Center during the July 1999 Biennial Reunion.
 
 

The exhibit opens with a panel depicting the historical setting of the "The finest school for Negro boys and girls: Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1929 - 1955". With the dedication of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1930, the Little Rock School District worked within the bounds of legal segregation to create an above average educational facility with college preparatory and vocational curriculum for Negroes. The pillars supporting the letters, D UNB AR , after the poet laureate Paul Laurence Dunbar, beckons the entry to its hallowed halls and classrooms to anyone who wanted a quality education.
 
 

Dunbar did not gain its reputation for excellence from being a "feeder school" like so many large high schools for Blacks  were during this period. Dunbar attracted students from all over Arkansas because of its reputation for academic rigor (as well as the absence of quality high schools in rural areas), not because it was the only school for Negroes in the central part of the state. Students even attended Dunbar from North Little Rock, where Scipio A. Jones High School was arguably the second best high school for Negroes in the state.
 
 

As magnificent as Dunbar was, the promise of separate but equal did not extend to the facility. Two years before Dunbar opened, the Little Rock School Board built what the New York Times called the largest and most beautiful high school in America: Little Rock High School, renamed Central High School in 1953. The construction of the high school depleted the district’s budget for future building projects, forcing the school board (with substantial urging from Little Rock’s colored leadership class) to go to outside sources to fund construction of a high school for Negroes. Monies from the Rosenwald Fund and (Rockefeller) General Education Fund helped pay for the construction but there was not enough money to pay for a gymnasium, or many of the supplies and textbooks needed to equip the school.
 
 

The viewer is then led to the panel Teachers & Students that discusses the teacher qualifiations and student expectations.  When Dunbar opened in 1929, the qualifications for teacher certification was two years of college or suitable professional experience (for vocational instructors). The faculty set standards of excellence for themselves as well as for their students and they placed expectations on their students to rise to meet those standards.

Eventually all of the academic teachers at Dunbar possessed bachelor's degrees and many of them earned graduate degrees in their disciplines. Not only did this level of education make the faculty well qualified  to teach at Dunbar, their own experience navigating the system of segregated education in the United States made them invaluable advisors to their students. In essence, the faculty would speak with authority and from experience about the educational opportunities available at the "Negro Colleges" or the schools that would accept Blacks.

Our teachers set standards of excellence while the expectations were that the students would follow them.
                                       What ever their best was, they had to do it.
 

The educational curriculum was liberal arts based, however it included industrial arts courses (brick laying, auto mechanics, electricity, printing, clothing, and laundry) that prepared non college bound students for employment after high school. Continuing is a panel depicting extracurricular activities such as football, basketball, track, cheer leading, and band.  Notably absent were swimming, tennis, and baseball.
 
 

With Dunbar's debut on the local education scene, the Arkansas society accurately boasted of Little Rock's finest school buildings for white and colored alike. The best facilities that can be secured, and a curriculum far in advance of the average school in the South for colored people. In addition to the 24 classrooms, Dunbar contained a music room, a library, a science department with labs, an infirmary, a kitchen and workshops for vocational trades.

Both the size of Dunbar and its imposing brick facade frequently took more students by surprise; especially if they came from rural areas and not Little Rock. Arkansans remember the mammoth building as "magnificent", "impressive", and somewhat more specifically a hue building that was kind of overwhelming at first.

Such a large and elaborate facility with an adequate faculty and staff which existed when Dunbar opened. More importantly was the education possessed by the faculty which was attested by the special bulletin on teacher qualifications was higher than usual for a Negro school. Among the earliest faculty members, Principal John H. Lewis held bachelor's and master's degrees from Morris Brown College, Yale and the University of Chicago. Teachers A. B. Fox and W. O. Jackson graduated from Kansas State Teachers College. E. C. Cooper and B. T. Shelton attended Tuskegee Institute. Dunbar was fortunate to have Charlotte Stephens who possessed the longest tenure with Little Rock schools at 60  years. as the librarian and occasional English and Latin teacher.

The combination of the physical facility, the faculty, and a rigorous academic curriculum resulted in Dunbar receiving accreditation from the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges in 1931. A majority of white schools did not have North Central Accreditation, so it was a tremendous endorsement of Dunbar to receive that recognition of excellence.
 
 
 

Despite the absence of a gymnasium until 1950 or a practice field at Dunbar, sports were the most popular extra-curricular activities at the school.
A former football player recounts walking a couple miles to Crump Park to practice. After practice "we had to walk back to the campus making for a very long day".

Basketball proved difficult to master without a gymnasium. School administrators made arrangements for the boys and girls to play at the Masonic Temple, the YMCA, and the Arkansas Baptist College.

Some of the first extra-curricular activities to appear at Dunbar were activities that supported Dunbar athletics. Energetic students  became members of the pep squad, or cheer leaders  and others directed their musical talents towards the band. Although the band started out small in 1934, it gradually grew to become the single largest extra-curricular activity on campus. Although Little Rock High School had a band , the Little Rock School Board refused to fund a band at Dunbar. In an ironic twist, the Little Rock High School band performed a fund raiser for the Dunbar band. By 1950, Dunbar's marching band performed at music festivals with bands from North little Rock, Memphis, and St. Louis. Other activities found at Dunbar included student government, student year book, newspaper, debate team, junior/senior prom, the Latin Club, the Spanish Club, homecoming activities and track team.

Dunbar excelled and flourished under the leadership of three principals from its opening in 1929  until its conversion to a junior high school in 1955. Pictured on the panel are some of the graduating classes during the tenure of Principal John H. Lewis: the classes of 1930 - 1943, Principal  William H. Martin, the classes 1944 - 1945, and Principal L. M. Christophe, the classes 1945 - 1955. Each principal served concurrently as the dean of Dunbar Junior College which was collocated with the high school.
 
 

Today the legacy of Dunbar High School lives on in the former students and faculty who attended and taught at the school. This legacy is an embodiment of their achievements as leaders in Education, Industry, Government, Military Science, Law, Space Technology, Business, Healthcare and Administration.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The exhibit concludes with a Teachers Wall of Fame that highlights the presence of a dedicated, devoted, proud, and  well trained professional, faculty that instilled a sense of pride in its students despite the insurmountable odds they faced. Graduates always felt welcome on return visits to the school and evoked words of praise and encouragement when told what they were doing since high school.

Behind each teacher is a group of students whose lives are impacted by the teachings and leadership of that educator, a part of which lives on from generation to generation.

A  graduating class panel, with superimposed panels of teachers illustrates a relationship that typically existed throughout the students enrollment at Dunbar from the day of enrollment until graduation .