- Violence
- Segregation
- 1960
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
The English Avenue School bombing (1960)
Early on December 12, 1960, a bomb exploded outside English Avenue School, which the city had switched from white to Black students in 1950. No one was hurt and no one was ever charged.
The record
The school opened in 1910 as Western Heights School at English Avenue and Pelham Street, in a neighborhood laid out for white working-class families, and was later renamed for its first principal, Lula L. Kingsbery. As white residents moved away, and after a 1950 NAACP federal lawsuit, the city redesignated it for Black students in 1950. The blast shattered windows and damaged classrooms. Residents suspected retaliation either for a teacher's push for new textbooks or for a civil rights prayer service and march held the day before in support of student sit-ins. Mayor Hartsfield blamed people from outside the city limits, calling them the 'outhouse crowd'. The Temple had been bombed in 1958.
Today: English Avenue Elementary closed in 1995.