An East-of-the-River View

—Anacostia Heritage Trail —

Anacostia's Ketcham School (across Good Hope Road) opened in 1908 to serve white elementary school children. For junior and senior high school, whites crossed the river until 1935, when Anacostia Junior-Senior High School opened at 16th and R Streets, four blocks to your left. In 1943 Kramer Junior High opened next door for grades seven through nine.

African American children had to cross the river for junior high school until 1950, when Douglass Junior High opened in the old Birney School. Their older siblings continued the commute for another four years until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education).

Under DC's 1954 desegregation plan, students were allowed to remain in their current school until graduation, or they could switch immediately to their neighborhood school. That first September only 44 of Anacostia High School's approximately 1,200 students were African American. School opened calmly, but in early October white students at Anacostia, Eastern, and McKinley, High Schools staged a strike to protest desegregation. Elsewhere students returned quickly to classes, but in Anacostia police had to step in to end the protest.

Washington's German Orphan Home once stood about six blocks up Good Hope Road. Founded in 1879 by the Concordia
German Evangelic Lutheran Church in Foggy Bottom, the home moved to "Good Hope Hill Farm" purchased from Captain Samuel and Flora Cabell in 1880. In 1965 it moved to Upper Marlboro Md., before closing in 1978.

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