Founded in 1935, Woodrow Wilson High School was an all-white public high school built across the street from a recently demolished Black neighborhood. Now named Jackson-Reed, our building has decades of racial history and is currently home to a diverse group of around 2,000 students who take pride in Jackson-Reed’s accepting mindset.
Originally called Tennallytown, this area was developed in the late 1700s and is one of the oldest neighborhoods in DC. During the Civil War, Tennallytown was home to Union forces after Fort Reno was built in 1861 to communicate with nearby troops and protect the city. After the war, Reno City was built on the former fort, containing about 100 homes, several stores, and a church. A racially integrated neighborhood, Reno City was about 75% Black and 25% white. In 1903, the Jesse Reno School was built as a kindergarten through eighth grade school for Black Reno residents.
After a 1922 Congress evaluation declared DC public schools overcrowded and neighboring white residents protested to have Reno City demolished, Alice Deal Middle School and Woodrow Wilson High School were set to be built. Woodrow Wilson High School officially opened September 23, 1935 as an all-white school named after the 28th US president known for his international peace initiatives and racist national policies.
A pair of Supreme Court decisions laid the groundwork for integration. In 1954, after several lawsuits against segregated school boards, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case passed—a decision instrumental to civil rights. Brown v. Board ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which provides that “equal protection of the laws” must be ensured regardless of race, sex, or any other discriminants. After the Bolling v. Sharpe Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in DC schools unconstitutional, six of DC’s seven all-white high schools accepted Black students for the first time in the fall of 1954. Wilson hired their two first Black teachers that same fall: Edna Burke Jackson, our now school namesake, and her colleague Archie Lucas. It wasn’t until 1955, however, that Wilson, the last school not compliant with desegregation rulings, enrolled their first two Black students.
Edna Jackson graduated as valedictorian from Dunbar High School in 1928, one of DC’s all-Black public high schools. She graduated from Howard University and started her teaching career at an all-Black high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she taught for six years before moving back to DC to teach at Cardozo, a then all-Black high school in DC, for 15 years. In 1954, Jackson joined the staff at Wilson where she stayed until her retirement in 1976.
Brown v. Board of Education ruling shifted demographics both at the school and across the city. The DC population went from 65% white in 1950 to majority Black in 1960 as white residents began moving to the suburbs. Wilson too experienced a similar shift as it began integrating.
Teachers who have worked at Jackson-Reed for a long time have noted the demographic shift even over the past decade. Health teacher Rebecca Bradshaw-Smith pointed out that there was “a huge shift between 65 or 70% African-American in 2010, when [she] got here,” to now. Currently Jackson-Reed is one of DC’s most diverse schools, with our student body being 28% Black, 26% Hispanic, 36% white, 5% Asian, and 5% mixed race. Despite our diverse student body, many aspects of our school don’t accurately represent this diversity, such as some clubs or sports.
Health teacher Lejanika Green discussed the change in professional development regarding implicit racial biases with the change in demographics. “Depending on the demographics of the teachers in comparison to the demographic of our students, some students may be labeled as being more problematic or having behavior issues just because of the difference of culture,” she explained.
As the school’s racial composition constantly evolves and Jackson-Reed continues to see both adversary and inclusion every day, it’s important that we not only adapt but remain an open-minded and accepting school working towards equality. While JR’s history cannot be changed, it can be a place to mark not only our progress but that of the country.