A once segregated Baltimore school where future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall received his early education is set to receive a $6 million makeover, that will turn it into a legal resource center and museum space.
The Baltimore Sun reports that Historic Public School 103, also known as Henry Highland Garnet School, is a nearly 150-year-old civil rights landmark that lost its luster years ago amid encroaching blight. The elementary school was a springboard for Marshall, who as a lawyer successfully challenged segregated schooling nationwide and was the first African American associate justice on the Supreme Court.
Plans for its redevelopment include space for legal advocacy offices, gun violence prevention work and job training, according to partners in the project. It will include interactive exhibits that showcase the history of prominent leaders such as Marshall.
P.S. 103 opened in 1877 as a school for white children. It was converted into a school for black children in 1910, as demographics in the neighborhood changed, and was later named for Garnet, an abolitionist and preacher who had been born into slavery on the Eastern Shore.
The community was once home to a cluster of black luminaries who changed the course of American history, including Marshall and husband-and-wife attorneys Clarence Mitchell Jr. and Juanita Jackson Mitchell, who fought alongside Marshall to desegregate public spaces in America.
Marshall started classes at the school in 1914, according to the Baltimore Heritage Area Association.
The school was integrated after Marshall won the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court in 1954. It was closed as a school in the early 1970s, then served until the 1990s as the Upton Cultural and Arts Center. It’s been vacant ever since.
A few years back, a fire badly damaged the building. The city stepped in to replace the roof and stabilize the building, but until now had not found a new use for it, despite convening a commission to study its potential moving forward.
[FROM 2016: Fire damages historic former school building in Baltimore]
The new community center will be part of a much larger “transformation” planned for the surrounding Upton neighborhood, says Michael Braverman, the city’s housing and community development commissioner.
