- School
- Segregation
- 1924–1969
- DeKalb County
- Location approximate
Hamilton High School, Scottdale
A school for Black children in the Scottdale mill community, begun in 1924 as the Avondale Colored School and later Hamilton High. It closed in 1969 when a court order shut all of DeKalb's Black schools.
The record
A DeKalb History Center oral history recorded with Scottdale residents says the school was built in 1924 as the Avondale Colored School. Eighth and ninth grades were added and it became Avondale Colored High School, serving about half of DeKalb's Black community; after a mailing mix-up with the white Avondale High School it was renamed Hamilton High for Ms. Maud Hamilton Dawson, one of its first principals. Robert Shaw Elementary was built in 1954 on land donated by Robert Shaw, and residents describe the two as the first Black institutions in DeKalb named for Black citizens. In 1969, 'by court order ... all DeKalb County black schools was closed', Hamilton and Robert Shaw among them. The order was the 1969 consent decree in the desegregation suit Black parents filed against the DeKalb County School System in 1968, the case the U.S. Supreme Court later decided as Freeman v. Pitts (1992).
Today: Scottdale's Hamilton Recreation Center and senior programs keep the name.
Where on the map: Scottdale's Black community lay across the railroad from the mill village; see the Scottdale neighborhood entry.