It’s called the oldest high school to graduate Black students west of the Mississippi River. Sumner High School opened in 1875. There’s been an ongoing fight with the school board to keep the school alive.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, is the oldest school west of the Mississippi River to graduate Black students. It celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. But after a deadly tornado this spring, it faces an uphill battle to survive. Andrea Henderson of St. Louis Public Radio reports.
ANDREA HENDERSON, BYLINE: Sumner High School was built in 1875. It’s located in a well-known St. Louis neighborhood called The Ville. The area was once the city’s epicenter for Black entertainment and business. It’s deteriorated since, but Louisa Williamson (ph) lived there when it was bustling. She attended Sumner in the early 1940s and says she was surrounded by excellence.
LOUISA WILLIAMSON: The teachers saw to it that we learned. There’s a whole lot of Blacks that graduated from Sumner that were great.
WILLIAMSON: Ooh, Chuck Berry was a classmate of mine. And Tina Turner, she was a classmate of my brother’s.
HENDERSON: And the list goes on. Tennis legend Arthur Ashe, opera singer Grace Bumbry and comedian Dick Gregory once all walked the halls of Sumner. However, over the past several years, Sumner has faced declining enrollment. Many Black families began moving out of the area after housing segregation laws became illegal. And in 2020, the St. Louis Board of Education weighed whether to close Sumner to save money. But then a new challenge came this spring when a strong tornado tore through St. Louis. The city’s mayor, Cara Spencer, said the storm caused miles of destruction.
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CARA SPENCER: We’re talking about thousands of buildings. Thousands of families are being displaced.
HENDERSON: And the tornado destroyed Sumner’s roof and several classrooms. The school board estimated there were more than a million dollars in damage. For now, Sumner’s students attend classes at a much smaller middle school a mile away.
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HENDERSON: And its principal, Ronda Wallace, makes a point to chat with students daily in the cafeteria during lunch.
RONDA WALLACE: Where you been all my life? Where you been all my life? Welcome home, baby. You good?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Yes, ma’am.
WALLACE: It’s good to see you.
HENDERSON: Wallace says she’s tried to make the students as comfortable as possible. But every day, they ask about returning to Sumner.
WALLACE: It’s not a negative ask. It’s the, OK, when are we going to get the new roof? When are we going to get our new floors? And are they going to fix the gym, too?
HENDERSON: Wallace knows the district is considering closing some schools again, but she hopes Sumner is not on the list. That’s also the hope of hundreds of alumni that came to Sumner’s annual gala this summer and celebrated the school’s 150th anniversary. E.W. Clay, who graduated in 1972, says the school shaped so many students’ lives.
EW CLAY: Sumner High School taught me to be an activist in the community. Most of the teachers were activists in addition to being experts in the field of education.
HENDERSON: The school board says it plans to repair Sumner, but there’s no date set for return. Dakota Scott, who graduated from Sumner this past May, says if the district decides to shutter it, officials will have a fight on their hands.
DAKOTA SCOTT: I hope that not only do they not close my school down, because we are currently thriving, but I hope that with the fundings that they’re allegedly supposed to get from closing these schools down that they will actually give us better quality education.
HENDERSON: And in an effort to keep one of the city’s most storied and impactful schools alive, alumni are working to get Sumner national historic landmark status through the National Park Service.
For NPR News, I’m Andrea Henderson in St. Louis.
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Andrea Henderson 2025-10-22 19:51:36
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