T UR N S 1 00 By Elizabeth Muscari and David Muscari
DALLAS’S ACCLAIMED BOOKER T. WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE PERFORMING AND VISUAL ARTS OBSERVES A CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR WITH AN EYE ON ITS HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE BOTH PAST AND PRESENT
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hat do baseball legend Ernie “Mr. Cub” Banks, eclectic performance artist Erykah Badu, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, and decorated singer-songwriters Norah Jones and Edie Brickell share in common? They’re all graduates of Dallas’s esteemed Booker T. Washington High School. Today, the school is considered among the nation’s top magnet schools, an effective launch pad for artists, musicians, actors, dancers, and writers. Its history is long, complex, Known as the “Queen of Neo Soul,” Dallas native Erykah Badu is a Booker T. grad and an award-winning singer, actor, and producer
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D A L L A S H OT E L M A G A Z I N E
and, as school officials suggest, “a tale of two schools.” This year, the school will observe an important milestone when it turns 100. It has the unique distinction of being the first all-Black high school in Dallas. In those days, the sports teams were called the Bulldogs, like the ones that Banks led in the 1950s. The school doesn’t offer sports anymore, and its towering mascot is now Pegasus, the fiery mythological winged horse. But the two eras, Bulldogs and Pegasus, are intimately linked. The centennial celebration will focus a good deal on the first era, which in some respects has been lost. Opened in 1922, Booker T. Washington High School became the only high school in Dallas that allowed students of color, attracting Black kids from all over town. In 1943, it was the first Black school in Texas to organize a chapter of the National Honor Society. A $1 million renovation in 1952 gave it a new name: Booker T. Washington Technical High School. The school was repurposed as the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts in 1976, inheriting
Photo By Sharen Bradford/The Dancing Image
PEGASUS POWER
