Reading and Riting and Rithmetic ‘ ‘
of Seventh and Rhode Island is Asbury Dwellings for senior citizens. In the building opened as the city’s white-only McKinley Technical School,memorializing slain President William McKinley ( - ). In the “colored” school system took over the building for a new Shaw Junior High,honoring Robert Gould Shaw.Shaw was the white commander of the Civil War Union Army’s th Massachusetts regiment of black soldiers. Shaw’s acclaimed faculty included abstract artist Alma W. Thomas ( - ),who taught there from until .Today her paintings hang in renowned art museums worldwide. As time passed,the school became overcrowded and rundown,and parents protested for better accom- modations.Finally in a new Shaw Junior High opened on Rhode Island Avenue.Asbury United Methodist Church opened the rehabilitated Asbury Dwellings for senior housing in . During the segregation era ( - ),the Shaw neighborhood was a center of black education.M Street High School,the nation’s first high school ( ) for black students,operated nearby.Three important high schools succeeded M Street — Cardozo (business),Dunbar (academic),and Armstrong (technical).Thousands of southern fami- lies migrated here specifically for the schools,where teachers with advanced degrees found work denied them by discriminatory colleges and universities. The library building at Rhode Island Avenue and Seventh St. honors plumbing businessman Watha T. Daniel ( - ).Daniel was a leader of the Model Inner City Community Organization,an early s coalition founded by Revs.Walter Fauntroy and Ernest Gibson to ensure that the poor would have a say in the urban renewal of Shaw.
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker