- School
- Segregation
- August 30, 1961
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
Brown High, desegregated Aug. 30, 1961
West End's white high school, one of the four desegregated on August 30, 1961. Within fifteen years the neighborhood around it was mostly Black.
The record
On August 30, 1961 nine Black students entered four white Atlanta high schools under a federal court order (Judge Frank Hooper's 1959 ruling): Thomas Franklin Welch, Madelyn Patricia Nix, Willie Jean Black, Donita Gaines, Arthur Simmons, Lawrence Jefferson, Mary James McMullen, Martha Ann Holmes and Rosalyn Walton. Welch and Nix were the two who entered Brown. Of 132 students who applied to transfer, 10 were chosen. The Sibley Commission (1960) had advised accepting Judge Hooper's decision while offering measures that would let schools remain largely segregated. Joseph E. Brown High School opened in 1923 at Peeples and Beecher streets as West End's largest school. By 1976 West End was 86 percent African American, according to the neighborhood's National Register nomination.
Today: The school site at Peeples and Beecher streets in West End.