Public Schools: Good in a Ghetto

A blighted neighborhood usually equals a blighted school—and if Detroit’s 2,800-student, 99% Negro Central High School accepted this common equation, it would be wilting fast. It is, by contrast, a powerhouse of good education.

The oldest public high school in Michigan, Central was founded in 1858 as an academic pipeline to the University of Michigan. Its plant is a majestic Georgian building on an 11-acre plot, and before World War II Dime Store Millionaire S. S. Kresge and the Dodge automotive clan had mansions in the vicinity. As late as 1954, Central seniors led the city by walking off with 42 college scholarships.

But after that, the white exodus to the suburbs changed the neighborhood into a Negro enclave. Negro lawyers, doctors and businessmen bought the comfortable houses along La Salle Boulevard that were vacated by whites. Poorly educated Negroes, including migrants from the South, poured into nearby tenements to supply the bulk of Central’s students. On form, the school’s reputation seemed imperiled. Instead, says English Teacher Vunies High (sister of Joe Louis), “the student body has come alive.”

Inspiring Curiosity. One factor is the presence of a Negro parents’ association, composed mainly of the professional men among the area’s new residents. Being college-educated or college-oriented, they insisted that Central keep the high academic standards that had previously benefited whites. This goal got little sympathy from the tenement Negroes: children of the better-off families were bullied, beaten and shaken down by young toughs who scorned any interest in books. But the goal found a hearty response in Principal Charles S. Lewis, 56, an imaginative, ambitious administrator who set out to prove that “good teaching and a driving force” would make the difference be tween steady deterioration and a lively revival. With a big assist from Assistant Principal Mrs. Jessie Kennedy, who has since been promoted to principal of another Detroit high school, Lewis proved his point.

He encouraged the school newspaper to print student-written profiles of successful Negro educators, politicians, artists; emphasized Negro literature and history in English and social studies classes. Potential dropouts were led to stay in school by a cooperative work-study plan under which they studied in the mornings and went to work in the afternoons, earning as much as $70 a week.

For college-bound students, Central put in new language labs to teach French, Spanish, Latin, and even a four-year Russian course. Lewis raised requirements in math and science and joined Detroit’s experimental English study program, which enables a bright student to read everything from Tolstoy to James Baldwin. He set up an honors program that required students to amass 200 credit hours, 40 more than the minimum for graduation; despite the hard work, the number of honors students increased fivefold. Along with the stiff academic program, Lewis pushed for vigorous extracurricular activities including “great books” discussions, dramatics, Greek lessons, and music from jazz to opera.

On to College. Tailoring the curriculum to the intellectually mixed assortment of pupils, Lewis divided the student body into three ability groupings. At first, parents suspected that the system would stifle the incentive of slow learners; instead, teachers report that more students than ever are requesting transfers to higher ability classes. Among the 43 scholarship winners in last June’s graduating class was Top Student Hazel Armstrong, daughter of a maintenance man, who won two scholarships to Wayne State University. Yet until last year, she said, “I just never thought about college.”

About 25% of Central’s graduates go on to college, compared to 5% in Detroit’s other predominantly Negro high schools. In the last two years the city produced three John Hay Fellows, and two (one white and one Negro) were Central seniors. Yet it remains a constant struggle to preserve Central’s excellence in a ghetto. Says Lewis, now on leave with the U.S. Labor Department as a consultant on youth programs: “One of the great difficulties in education is our underestimating the culturally disadvantaged kid. He remains so only as long as we allow him to be.”