apshistory

Ashby Street School/E.R. Carter:

Ashby Street School opened in 1911 as an all-white school in the historic Washington Heights Neighborhood. Initially designed with three separate subdivision plats, one of these plats would ultimately become Atlanta’s first planned black neighborhood. As white developers abandoned the three remaining plats they would ultimately be taken over by Heman Perry, a 20th-century black developer, owner of the Standard Life Insurance Company of Atlanta. As the West-End neighborhood changed in demographics due to the 1917 Great Fire, white student enrollment changed dramatically by 1918. Due to a declining enrollment in white students, the school board voted to close Ashby Street School and reopen as a “school for Negroes,” by July of 1919.

The first principal of new African-American school would be H.L. Green, followed by Mrs. Harriet Randolph Bailey. In addition to traditional grammar school classes, Ashby Street School also provided schooling for the deaf community as well.

Late 1920’s Ashby Street School become the largest school African-American students in the Atlanta Public School System. As segregation caused African-American’s to have very few options in terms of places to live, the influx of African-American’s caused a storm of hateful actions by neighboring whites and the Ku Klux Klan. The K*K would firebomb Ashby Street School in 1922 with another mysterious fire gutting the building in 1926. Ashby Street School would be rebuilt in 1928 using the remaining walls that survived the 1926 fire.

Ashby Street School was renamed as E.R. Carter in 1944 after the cherished Atlanta Reverend, E.R. Carter who presided over Friendship Baptist

The school remained open until 1994 when it finally shuttered its doors. As of 2015, the abandoned school has been converted into a multi-million dollar Families First Resource Center.

Research: Forgotten APS Schools – Adair to Ashby Street
2nd 📸

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. attended 1st and 2nd grade at the Younge Street School!

To ensure a 1910 bond issue would pass, $38,200 was included for Black school slated for 4th ward (since it had the most Black voters).

The City purchased land from Bishop Henry M. Turner and the school was completed in 1911.

In the first year, Selena Sloan Butler established the country’s first “Colored Parents and Teachers Unit”. In 1955, it was to be renamed to honor her, but rules stated it could not be named for a living person, so they named it after her husband, H.R. Butler.

The school closed in 1979 and became community center. It was later demolished and the adjacent land is Selena Sloan Butler Park.