Qualla: Douglass Junior and Senior High School

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Carter G. Woodson graduated from the original Douglass High School in 1896, came back to serve as its principal, and went on to found Black History Month. Hal Greer attended the building that replaced Woodson's school, became the first African American athlete at Marshall University, and spent fifteen years as a star with the Philadelphia 76ers. Both men passed through the same Black educational institution in Huntington, West Virginia, separated by decades but linked by a shared experience: a school named for Frederick Douglass, built by African American teachers and community members under segregation, that produced graduates whose accomplishments outstripped what the larger society of their time was willing to acknowledge.

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: Two Buildings, One Mission

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The first Douglass High School in Huntington was built in 1891, named for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and established to educate African American students in a segregated city in a segregated state. The 1924 building that replaced it - the one that survives today - was a...

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: Carter G. Woodson

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) graduated from the original Douglass High School in 1896, became its principal, and went on to receive a doctorate in history from Harvard - only the second African American to do so. In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life...

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: Hal Greer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Harold Everett Greer (1936-2018) attended the 1924 Douglass building and graduated in the 1950s. He went on to Marshall University, becoming the first African American athlete in the school's history. From there he was drafted by the Syracuse Nationals in 1958. When the franchise...

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: Ira De Augustine Reid

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Among the faculty who taught at Douglass in its prime years was Ira De Augustine Reid (1901-1968), a prominent sociologist who would later lead the Atlanta University department after W. E. B. Du Bois. Reid was one of the foremost African American sociologists of the twentieth ce...

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Douglass Junior and Senior High School: After 1961

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Douglass closed as a school in 1961, when Cabell County's school system was desegregated and Black students were absorbed into formerly all-white schools. The building continued to be used for special education classes until 1981, then housed school district administrative office...

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0