ATLANTA — Tekeshia Hollis now walks the same school halls her grandparents and great-aunts did. Now, the principal of David T. Howard Middle School, Hollis showed off a classroom that was made to look like the classrooms of yesteryear. The school turns 100 years old this year.
Howard was a former slave who was born in middle Georgia in the 1800's. He would become one of the first Black millionaires in the city of Atlanta, and in turn, he donated several acres of land to found the all-Black David T. Howard Elementary School in 1923.
'If you walk around the building, you'll see pieces of old and pieces of new," Hollis said. “We’re a very diverse student body, but we still honor the past and honor each others’ cultures. It’s very humbling to know that those greats who walked these halls and were trying to contemplate what was going to be next in their lives used to sit here and do the same things these kids are doing now.”
Notable alums include basketball hall-of-famer Walt "Clyde" Frazier, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., entrepreneur Herman J. Russell, and former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.
In 1948, the school became Atlanta's second all-Black high school. In 1976, the school closed. But in 2020, after the community dealt with overcrowding at Inman Middle School, Howard reopened as a middle school at the height of the pandemic.
"The first two years, the kids weren't even really in the building," Hollis said. "Their parents couldn't come to be part of the community that makes education great."
Times changed over the years. A homecoming of Howard alumni Friday was proof of those changing times. Former Atlanta Police Chief Eldrin Bell, once a student at Howard, marveled at how much different the school looked.
"I saw it not being a segregated school that I started in, but an integrated school that brings a whole host of people together," Bell said. "That makes me feel good."
Ruth Freeman taught science at Howard from 1961-1967, when it was a high school. She hadn't been back inside the building since she left.
"Walt Frazier was in my homeroom," Freeman said. "I'm just overjoyed to be back here. After all these years, seeing some of my students and some of the teachers I've taught with, it's beautiful."
From then to now, that history has been documented in art, photos and keepsakes. A new mural was unveiled Friday to showcase the school through the years and its significance in Atlanta. That famous history lives on, Hollis said, through the current students 100 years later.
"There has to be a connection to the past to get us to a greater future," Hollis said. "We have to understand what we've gone through and the lived experiences that people have had so we don't make the same mistakes. It's a hundred years of legacy."