History of Baltimore City College

The history of The Baltimore City College began in March 1839, when the City Council of Baltimore, Maryland, passed a resolution mandating the creation of a male high school with a focus on the study of English and classical literature. "The High School" (later becoming The Baltimore City College) was opened later in the same year on October 20, with 46 pupils under the direction of Professor Nathan C. Brooks,(1809-1898), a local noted classical educator and poet, who became the first principal of a new type of higher institution in the developing public education system in the city begun in 1829.^[1] It is now considered to be the third oldest public high school / secondary school in the nation. In 1850, the Baltimore City Council granted the school, then known as the "Central High School of Baltimore", the authority to present its graduates with certificates of completion.^[2] An effort to expand that academic power and allow the then named "Central High School of Baltimore" to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees began following the Civil War in 1865, and continued the following year with the renaming of the institution as "The Baltimore City College", which it still holds to this day, with also the retitling of its chief academic officer from "principal" to "president", along with an increase in the number of years of its course of study and the expansion of its courses. However, despite this early elevation effort, it ended at that brief period unsuccessfully in 1869, although the B.C.C. continued for a number of years as a hybrid public high school and early form of junior college (later known as community college) which did not fully appear in America in different form until the beginning of the 20th century. Very often the elaborate decorative fancy engraved graduation diploma from the B.C.C. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was accepted by many other colleges and universities entitling City graduates to enter upper-division schools at the sophomore year, (which was also coincidentally a privilege also accorded to its later local academic and athletic rival for 127 years - "Poly", the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, founded 1883 as the Baltimore Manual Training School, later renamed 1893).^[3]

As the importance of higher education increased in the early 20th century, the High School's priorities shifted to preparing students for college.^[4] In 1927, only one year before the school moved from its home at Howard and Centre Streets for 53 years to the magnificent stone "Castle on the Hill" on "Collegian Hill", the academic program was further changed, when the City College divided its curriculum into two tracks: the standard college preparatory program, or "'B' Course", and a more rigorous stiff "Advanced College Prep" curriculum, the famed "'A' Course" of study focusing on humanities, social studies, liberal arts and the Classics. (also available in the mathematics/science/technology fields in a more structured form with little options/electives at "Poly" and at Western and Eastern High Schools for girls).^[5]

The school underwent major demographic changes following the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in the May 1954 decision "Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" case that called for an end to racial segregation. African Americans joined City College for the first time at the end of that summer, in September 1954 and became a significant proportion of the student population by the 1960s, with over half black by 1966, reflecting similar trends in the city itself. Mr. Pierre H. Davis, also later became the first "Negro"/"Colored" teacher to join the B.C.C. faculty the following year of 1955 for only one year in the Business Education Department, along with Eugene Parker in the Physical Education Department, who went on becoming head basketball coach for three decades. Mr. Davis, coincidentally returned 15 years later to become the first Afro-American principal of the City College in September 1970.^[6] The school saw further changes in the student population with the admission of women in 1978.^[7]

Academic standards and enrollment numbers at the Baltimore City College (B.C.C.) after reaching a high of near 4,000 boys by the mid-1960s went through a period of decline first in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, with the rapid opening of newer additional high schools both in the outreaches of the city along with the rapidly expanding suburbs in surrounding Baltimore County. Two in the city system were Northwestern in 1965 and Northern in the following year. Three high schools were completed and opened all at one time in September 1971, with Southwestern, Walbrook and a massive huge complex nearby to City in Clifton Park on the bed of the old reservoir off Harford Road, Lake Clifton. The 'A' and 'B' courses were slowly dying out and unfortunately discontinued by 1973, and a single academic track was offered.^[8]

After another period of neglect in the late 1980s after the decade long stimulating and long leadership of the "New City College" program, curriculum and admissions standards under Principal Solomon Lausch, by the early 1990s, to the mid-1990s, with an increase in funding from the BCPS school system, and the selection of the high school to be one of the few to sub-contract out its maintenance and support functions to the Educational Alternatives, Inc. private system (E.A.I.) who were already academically operating and running several other city elementary and middle schools under an experimental but controversial contract with the BCPS and the school board. The B.C.C. began to experience a turnaround under new principal and former attorney, Dr. Joseph Wilson brought in during 1994 after a nationwide job search. Administrators re-strengthened academic standards and, in 1998, the school began offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program.^[9] By the beginning of the decade of the 2000s, City College was experiencing an academic resurgence. During this period the school was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School,^[10] was listed as one of the top high schools in the United States by Newsweek magazine.^[11]